J U L Y 2 8 I 9 52 2,5 ¢

CIOME. HOME~ MR. T,H:UIRBE!R

Consumers Union: A Red Front Lorslon D. ,Farrar

A Rebirth of Liberalism

Eisenhower's Opportunity A,nEdito,rial

The Self-Reliant South Margaret and Fletcher Collins EARS TO HEAR VOICES. Ears with which to "see" and even identify a plane as friend or foe many miles away. Ears for a "homing" device that tells a pilot how far he is from his base. The ears are antennae. Some planes have 39 to pick up and transmit signals for a dozen different purposes. Some even more. All depend on electronics. Thompson Products, long a leader in transportation progress, entered this field in the'408 by developing an electronic control for jet engines. Now Thompson IS knee~deep in electronics, builds such things as coaxial switches and antennae.

The plane with 39 ears. ••

The Thompson coaxial switch directs electrical currents, without leakage, at the touch of a finger. The only alternative is making slow, hazardous lnanual connections. This mnazing switch prOJnises new improvements in radio, television, telephone -wherever high frequency current is used. In the field of electronics as well as autolnotive and aircraft parts, you can count on Tholnpson Products, Inc., ,General Offices, Cleveland 17. .

This eoaxial switeh is a high frequency electronics device, product of the Thompson Products Electronics Division. Thompson perfected the means of combining two different plastics and several alloys in a mecha­ nism that would operate only if made to extremely close tolerances. THE A. Fortnightly Our Contributors For The concept of the professor as a cloistered pedant never had much verity. It is set reso~ Individualists reeman lutely at naught by the career of DR. LEO WOL­ MAN, the notable Columbia University econo­ mist, who contributes to this issue an article Editors JOHN CHAMBERLAIN FORREST DAVIS under the general title, "The Economics of HENRY HAZLITT* Freedom." Besides teaching, lecturing and writing on economics, Dr. Wolman has served Managing Editor SUZANNE LA FOLLETTE widely as an industry consultant, he was on Business Manager KURT M. LASSEN the staff of the American delegation to the *on leave Paris peace conference in 1919, he was chair­ man of the Labor Advisory Board of the un­ lamented NRA and a member of the National Labor Board.... This issue mounts another 16-inch gun, economically speaking, in DR. F. A. VOL. 2, NO. 22 JULY 28, 1952 Contents HAYEK, the world-famous author of "Road to Serfdom" (1944) and "Individualism and the Economic Order" (1948). Dr. Hayek ("A Re­ Editorials birth of Liberalism"), who is now with the The Fortnight...... 717 University of Chicago, previously taught at the Eisenhower's Opportunity 719 University of Vienna and the University of A Crest for Mr. Acheson...... 721 London. His article was translated from the Those Mature British 722 German. ... FLETCHER COLLINS, JR., ("The $655,000 for Your Thought 722 Self-Reliant South"), teaches dramatics at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia, Articles and, with his wife, his co-author, operates a The Self-Reliant South MARGARET COLLINS and farm outside Staunton.... The former gover­ FLETCHER COLLINS, JR. 723 nor of Colorado, JOHN C. VIVIAN ("Under­ Consumers Union: A Red Front LARSTON D. FARRAR 726 mining the Republic"), served as Colorado A Rebirth of Liberalism F. A. HAYEK 729 chairman, Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report, 1951-'52.... LARSTON D. FARRAR ("Con­ A Picklish Situation DON KNOWLTON 732 sumers Union: A Red Front") is a Washington Undermining the Republic JOHN C. VIVIAN 734 correspondent, former associate editor of Na­ Books tion's Business and editor and publisher of the Washington Religious Review, a news service. A Reviewer's Notebook JOHN CHAMBERLAIN 739 ••• DON KNOWLTON of Cleveland ("A Picklish A Living Creed EDWARD A. KELLER 740 Situation"), the Knowlton of the Hill and A Light That Still Shines MAX EASTMAN 741 Knowlton public relations firm-wrote "Gov­ The Last Frontier ' JAMES RORTY 743 ernment Pie in the Sky" for the Freeman of Carpers on Lawrence EDWARD DAHLBERG 743 November 5, 1951. ... THE REV. EDWARD A. Brief Mention...... 744 KELLER ("A Living Creed" in the Book Review Section) is the distinguished professor of eco­ The Economics of Freedom nomics at Notre Dame. Government by Boards LEO WOLMAN 731

Arts and Entertainments Among Ourselves The Secret Lives of James Thurber..WILLIAM S. SCHLAMM 736 A number of Freeman readers have been in­ quiring about the cost of subscribing for the Poems college year for sons, daughters, nephews et Prophecy EDWARD MURRAY CASE 733 alia. ..• A commendable idea about which we shall make an announcement soon.•.• The Letters 746 Minute Women of Pinellas County, Florida, deeply concerned about the loss of our liberties, This Is What They Said ······· 738 have opened a circulating library in the busi­ ness center of St. Petersburg, and (you've guessed it) the Freeman is high on their list of

THE FREEMAN is published every other week. Publication Office, Orang~, C?nn. Edito.rial recommended literature. and General Offices 240 Madison Avenue, New York 16, N. Y. Copynght 11'1 the Umted The problem of Russia is always with us. It States, 1952, by the Freeman Magazine, Inc. John Cha~berlain, President; Henry Hazlitt, Vice President; Forrest Davis, Secretary; Alex L. Htllman, Treasurer; Suzanne overshadows all other considerations (including La Follette, Assistant Treasurer. party conventions), and the Freeman proposes Entered as second class matter at the Post Office' at Orange, Conn. Rates: Twenty-five cents the copy; five dollars a year in the United States, nine dollars for two years; six to deal with it exhaustively in our next issue. dollars a year elsewhere. We shall have articles by recognized authorities The editors can not be responsible for manuscripts submitted but if return pos'tage is together with a brilliant study of US-USSR enclosed they will endeavor to see that manuscripts' rejected are promptly returned. relations by a former counsellor of the Soviet It is not to be understood that articles signed with a name, pseudonym, or initials neces­ sarily represent the opinion of the editors, either as to substance or style. They are Foreign Office.... You will find a coupon on printed because, in the editors' judgment, they are intrinsically warth reading. page 745 of this issue; your subscription can begin with the special number on Russia. Printed in U.S.A.• by WilBon a. Lee Co.• Orance. Oonnecticut ~ll /lvllilllble 011 /lmericlls lllius/rilll Froll/ier

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Rico offers a low-cost labor supply and freedom The Fortnight from Federal income and excess profits taxes. If things keep going at the present rate the island ur Washington grapevine, seldom in error, that was once known as "the poorhouse of the O. ticks off the candidates that have been put out Caribbean" will soon become something of a para­ of the running at Chicago by President Truman. dise; and the squalor that results from burdened Adlai Stevenson was a recent casualty, the Presi­ businesses will transfer itself (not so mysteriously) dent terming him "too coy" (in any event, it was from Puerto Rico's capital of San Juan to such Ike, not Bob, who won amongst the Republicans); places as Dayton and Columbus, Ohio. then Mr. Truman remarked re Averell Harriman, "who ever heard of a Wall Street millionaire in the ne of the more ominous notes of the Republican White House?" Russell is out on sound political O clambake in Chicago may have been lost in grounds. The Administration's powerful leftist the tumult: press, radio and TV dispatched 5000 wing won't have him. Kefauver is persona non men to cover the activities of 1206 delegates and grata, Kerr scarcely a serious contender. Whom 1206 alternates. At that rate, how long can our does this leave for the Democratic nomination? sumptuously entertained society afford news events? Who but Harry. Whence, we would like to know, could come the 20,000,000 technicians our press, radio and TV ur prize for the most stunning non-sequitur of would require, at their present rate of curiosity O the month goes this time to Mr. Averell Har­ and thoroughness, for the coverage of the ten­ riman. He recently told reporters that he was "the million-man army America would employ in any only candidate [for the Democratic Presidential future war? On the other hand, there is a promise nomination] who stands full-square on the prin­ in this calamity. The hope that the unfathomable ciples of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman." destructiveness of modern weapons would abolish Having thus proved once again that he does not wars seems to have been foolishly optimistic; but lack courage, Mr. Harriman then proceeded to as­ the obvious impossibility of a comprehensive press sure the electorate that international tensions coverage may yet accomplish the feat. probably would ease and perhaps taxes could be reduced in two years-if the country also followed las for the future, the human race seems unable the Roosevelt-Truman principles. This, on the un­ A to govern itself in accordance with simple ra­ equivocal record of the last twenty years, is about tionality. Take the recent news from the Nether­ as logical as to say that probably hangovers would lands, for example. A year or so ago the Dutch ease and perhaps booze consumption could be re­ removed most of their self-imposed postwar eco­ duced in two years, if the country followed the nomic shackles. The result was a business boom. principles of the Third Avenue Bartenders Asso­ Then, last Winter, the Dutch economy seemed to ciation. be threatened with a depression. Unemployment seemed to be in the cards. The "planners" at once goodly number of American businesses are leaped to the attack, insisting that "controls" be A picking up and going. to Puerto Rico. Why? reinstituted. But the government held out against Because a Puerto Rican factory can earn nearly new infusions of socialistic medicine, and the re­ twice as much on a given volume of business as ward of sticking to free principles was a new up­ one in the United States. Originally something of turn and a reversal of the trend toward unemploy­ a Socialist, the canny Puerto Rican political leader, ment. Far from responding to this in a rational Luis Munoz Marin, has recently seen the light of way, however, the Dutch voters went to the polls day; as a result of the Munoz Marin illumination and gave the Dutch Labor Party a 3.37 per cent the Puerto Rican government is now granting increase in the total vote. In the Catholic region of long-term exemptions from taxes and license fees Southern Holland, the,Catholic Party lost heavily to new industries. In addition to tax rebates, Puerto to the Labor Party. In 1948 the Catholic, Anti- 718 THE FREEMAN

:ftevolutionary and Christian-Historical parties to­ now over 30,000 members is disputing wall space gether polled 53.44 per cent of the total votes; in all over France with the Communists. Posters are 1952 their collective total was 48.9 per cent. In the the bullets in this war of ideas. Communist prop­ Netherlands as elsewhere, a decisive sector of the aganda is turned against its users, lies are chal­ electorate seems to go on the principle that the lenged by facts. Illustrative and best known of way to get ahead is to reward your enemies and to the posters is the "dove that goes boom," an punish your friends. No wonder that lucid charac­ armored pigeon being the answer to Picasso's ter, Count Screwloose of Toulouse, preferred life "peace" dove. in the insane asylum to life in the "sane" world outside. he Freeman's dunce cap for the season rests Ton the brow of Carlisle Barton, chairman of the rofessor Maynard Krueger of Chicago, Norman Johns Hopkins University board of trustees. As P Thomas's heir apparent in organized American quoted in the N ew York Times of June 22, Mr. socialism, has quit after twenty-five years of party Barton declared that the two Congressional in­ membership. But, he made clear, he was changing quiries into Senator Joe McCarthy's charges that only his affiliations-not his credo. He thinks that Owen Lattimore was the "chief architect of our devout American Socialists such as he had better Far Eastern policy" and associated with Commu­ associate themselves with the "liberal-labor coali­ nists, "had proved nothing." tion inside and just outside the Democratic Party." This, we think, is an eminently sensible idea or, at immy Wechsler, the editor of the New York Post, any rate, a precise description of what has been Jhas at last admitted, in print, that Owen Latti­ happening for the last twenty years. If the Demo­ more has been an "intermittent" fellow-traveler of cratic Party now were to match Mr. Krueger's the Communists. Can it be that Jimmy is deserting honesty and change its name to Socialist Party, a McLiberalism and going over to McCarthyism? He grateful nation could at last choose between frankly had better be careful or he will be reduced to stated alternatives. writing for the Freeman, a benighted publication which, as everyone knows, has so "terrified" the n Administration which allowed Owen Latti­ press that Bertrand Russell and Supreme Court A more to mould its postwar China policy and Justice William O. Douglas can get their articles would have followed his lead in its postwar Japa­ about terrified intellectuals published only in the nese policy had it not been stymied by General Sunday sections of the New York Herald Tribune MacArthur, is now in the humiliating position of and the New York Times. If this paragraph doesn't having been called upon by a Congressional Com­ make much sense, don't blame us; we are just mittee to move for the indictment of its adviser on taking certain McLiberals at their word. It's the the Far East for perjury. But what is even more McLiberals who insist there is a reign of terror, humiliating is the finding of the McCarran Sub­ "thought control," and all that. As for us chickens committee on Internal Security, after careful and on the Freeman, we've just been trying to practice exhaustive investigation, that "Owen Lattimore our own free speech. Terrible thing. was, from some time beginning in the 1930s, a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet con­ n open-air drive-in moving picture proprietor spiracy." Largely through this man's influence, A who operates in our neighborhood is a man of 400,000,000 Chinese were delivered to Stalin, the great enterprise. To entice parents who can't find United States position in Asia was fatally com­ babysitters, he has established· on his premises (1) promised, and American boys are dying on a re­ a bottle-warming service for babies; (2) a jungle mote Asiatic·peninsula in a stalemate war now in gym for kids who get restive; (3) an arena com­ its third year. That's all. Mr. Acheson can hardly plete with pony to give children free rides while be expected to turn his back on Owen Lattimore. their parents are buying tickets; and (4) a clown to hand out free lollipops. He advertised the open­ he failure of the French Communist Party to ing day of these commendable services with great T arouse any public and particularly labor support fanfare. The only dubious note was the title of the for the release of Jacques Duclos arrested in the film offered' for grown-ups and kiddies, too. It was anti-Ridgway riots demonstrates a convincing loss something called "The Unwed Mother." of its prestige and emotional attraction. It does not follow that the Communist Party will not pick up he proud United States of America used to a sizeable number of votes in any election, largely T preen itself on its dynamic superiority to Mex­ protests; but it is now clear that French workers ico on the south and to Canada on the north. The will not play marionettes to their Stalinist pup­ Mexicans were regarded as stupid Statists and peteers. Contributing to this general decline is the comic-opera revolutionaries; the Canadians were work of Paix et Liberte a group founded in the thought of as stick-in-the-muds. N'ow it appears fall of 1950 by Jean-Paul David, a member of the that the old stereotypes are about to b~ reversed left Radical-Socialist party. The organization with and thrown in the U. S. A.'s collective face. The JULY 28, 1952 719 Mexican Government, in an access of sanity, has invited foreign communistic writers to get the hell Eisenhowers Opportunity out of Cuernavaca; and the Canadian economy, en­ couraged by sound governmental policies, is ex­ Dear Ike: panding without any correlative debasement of the This is a candid letter to a candid man who has a Canadian dollar, which continues to be worth more chance to win the election, if- than the American. To take advantage of increas­ The if involves the difference between winning ingsouthern hospitality, more and more Americans the Republican nomination for President and win­ are moving to Mexico City. And to take advantage ning on pay-off day in November. Believe us, they of a substantial increase in their sales of Canadian are two different arts. securities to American customers, New York Quite candidly, the verdict at Chicago proved brokerage houses such as Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, nothing about the popular temper of the country Fenner and Beane are opening up branch offices in conle election day. What was demonstrated at Chi­ Toronto. If present trends persist, the sensible cago was that the Eastern, "internationalist" Re­ American of the future will no doubt find himself publicans can dominate conventions. With their re­ living in Mexico City on the income from money sources in the matter of public relations outfits, invested in Alberta oil wells, Labrador iron ore press and money, they nominated Willkie in 1940, deposits, and Quebec gold and copper mines. When and De'wey in 1944 and 1948. Dewey and his old he wishes to go north from Mexico to inspect his manager, Herb Brownell, pulled the levers for you properties in Canada he will fly over the United at Chicago this year, and they did a masterly job. States, pitying the poor dopes who are condemned You are to be congratulated on having such able by circumstance or deficiencies in natural intelli­ convention managers. By comparison with your­ gence to live below. self, Taft was in the hands of amateurs. N'ow, however, you have an election on your e keep hearing complaints that Al Capp, the hands. You must win that election for the sake of Wcartoonist, is a lefty. We refuse to believe this America. But you will not win it unless you ponder for the simple reason that his comic strip, "Li'l the difference between winning against other Re­ Abner," continues week after week as one of the publicans and winning against a .Democrat. few powerful popular preachments against the In Detroit you proclaimed yourself a "no deal" Welfare State. Consider what has been going on man. As a general thing, that's fine and dandy. But recently in Li'l Abner Yokum's home community of if you were thinking in terms of the nomination Dogpatch. An inspector for the Bureau of Wild when you said that, you were fooling yourself. Life, Washington, D. C., has decided that Dog­ Nominations can not be had without deals, and patchers are really animals, and in consequence the your men at Chicago made plenty of them. They Federal government has built a big wire fence dealt with Governor John Fine to get Pennsylvania around the Dogpatch area. Inside the fence the delegates, with Summerfield to get Michigan dele­ government has been feeding the Dogpatch "ani­ gates. And why not? That is the only way a con­ mals" on high-grade animal food-steaks, gravy, vention can come to a conclusion about a candidate. chops, hothouse grapes. But Li'l Abner's mammy, If there were no deals, no compromises, no trades, alone among the Dogpatchers, doesn't like being an the balloting would go on forever. animal;, she insists upon her rights asa "hoomin The difference between a nomination and an elec­ bean." tion, however, is that you don't win an election by Doughty as always, Pansy Yokum descends upon deals. You win an election by asserting leadership, Washington with a demand that the government by taking forthright action to persuade, stimulate, practice "economy" in Dogpatch by thinning out cajole and drive the weak, the half-convinced, the the Dogpatchus Erectus herd. Lined up at the gun­ wavering and what Jim Wick calls the "inner con­ point by Federal exterminaters, the Dogpatchers flict" cases into your camp. To do this, you must decide they are "hoomin beans" after all-and they not be an "inner conflict" case yourself. Waverers prove it to their guards by certifying that "we all don't attract waverers. done voted fo' .Senator Jack S. Phogbound." ("No The trouble with the Republican candidates in animal would be stupid enough to do that! !") Re­ 1940, 1944 and 1948 is, that they were waverers and covery of their rights means that the Dogpatchers inner conflict cases. Willkie never could make up must go back to hewing wood, drawing water and his mind whether his best bet was to fight "Champ" dreaming of "those good ole days when we was Roosevelt or· imitate him. Dewey, in 1944, was torn beasts." But at least the Dogpatchers are free. between two impulses. He knew something about Now it may be true that Al Capp looks upon him­ the origins of the Pearl Harbor tragedy, and he self as something of a lefty. But if he isn't a capi­ had a suspicion that Roosevelt was being led down talist, he is at least a Cappitalist-and his left the garden path by those who put Russian interests hand certainly doesn't know what his good right ahead of American. But we were still at war in cartoonist's hand has been doing in the service of 1944, and a frustrated Dewey could never quite freedom from Washington bureaucracy. find a \vay of using his knowledge in a political 720 THE FREEMAN contest with the Commander-in-Chief. In 1948 sophisticated. In the ranks of the sophisticates Dewey could have struck out confidently at Truman. there are powerful Eastern newspaper, magazine But he stuck to "high-level" campaigning-which and radio magnates, many big business men and was tantamount to an admission that he had no financiers (some of them closely tied into the pres­ real case for asking the voters to change horses ent Administration through defense contracts) . even on a safe river bank. The "high-level" cam­ But these people, while they can influence a con­ paign, seemingly based on confidence, was actually vention and its picked delegates, can not swing a confession that Dewey was afraid to smash out many votes in November. Roosevelt won by ignor­ against the Welfare State. ing them completely; he actually boasted that the As Mr. Wick points out in a book which is re­ newspaper, magazine and radio magnates were viewed on page 739 of this issue of the Freeman, against him. The unsophisticated, however, add up the Willkie-Dewey theory was that Democrats to a lot of votes. might be enticed into Republican ranks by a little "You support Taft," one of these unsophisticated judicious haziness on all matters pertaining to Republicans told Miss Thompson before she left Statism. According to Mr. Wick, the standard for the convention, "he represents us." By "us" he Willkie and Dewey acceptance speech could be meant the "people who pay our taxes even when we summed up in 23 words: "Having nominated me, hate what the Government does with them; who re­ you Republicans are trapped. You have nowhere gard it as a disgrace to expect our fellow citizens else to go. Now sit back and watch me win New to support us, who believe we should get what we Deal votes." earn but earn what we get; whose sons are·the But you, Ike, must not be fooled by your pre­ first to volunteer in America's wars and who ex­ convention advisers into taking that line. For the pect if we get in them to win them; and who know truth is that the traditional Republicans do have a darn well nobody is going to protect America but place to go, or, rather,a place to stay. And that Americans. We are the vanishing Americans, place, come election day, is home. pushed around by big business, big labor, big gov­ The truth i5~ that the significant Republican elec­ ernment,and big military. And if we lose this elec­ tion victories of recent years have gone to those tion we are finished. Eisenhower won't win it for who have been willing to fight on old-fashioned Re­ us even if he wins. He'll win it for another branch publican principles. We give you the Taft victory of the same people who are running the country in Ohio.in 1950. Taft won by slugging it out with now." the labor leaders who tried to beat him over the Miss Thompson's friend was going by appear­ head with the Taft-Hartley Act. Then there was ances when he made that crack about you. For it the Dirksen victory in Illinois in 1950, a victory isn't true that you have to win the election for "an­ won against Scott Lucas, Truman's majority leader other branch" of the Truman-Acheson crowd. (In­ in the Senate. Dirksen opposed a compulsory FEPC deed, if you try to do that you will lose.) As for -and got 30 per cent of the Negro vote in Chicago, those "vanishing Americans" mentioned by Mjss the highest polled by a statewide Republican can­ Thompson's gloomy friend, you yourself spring didate since before the New Deal. He opposed Fed­ from their loins. You are a Kansan, a product of erally subsidized public housing-and carried Illi­ the very people "who regard it as a disgrace to nois by 250,000. expect our fellow citizens to support us." And you We fear, Ike, that your pre-convention backers must know, in your heart of hearts, that "nobody will ask you to be soft on certain matters. You is ever going to protect America but Americans." yourself will have some qualms about attacking old This is not to say that Europeans can't be per­ comrades-in-arms on the subject of foreign policy. suaded to protect Europe; it is only to say that But look at it this way: you can not possibly lose Americans must not put their primary trust in the support of the Eastern Republicans by attack­ others. ing Yalta, or Dean Acheson's record, or the record The votes at the convention went your way, not of George Marshall as an envoy to China. On for­ Taft's. But the mightiest applause went to three eign policy the Eastern Republican~ have no place men who weren't in the running for the nomination. to go except to stay with you in any event. The One of these men was Joe McCarthy, who talked broad masses of the traditional Republican Party, about an issue which keeps many Americans awake however, will not vote at all if you happen to be nights-the issue of Communist infiltration in gov­ soft on the subject of the Truman-Acheson foreign ernment. The others were Herbert Hoover and policy record. For these masses are not in a mood General MacArthur. Theirs were the calm voices, to trifle with the appeasement·of communism, or the confident voices. They spoke out of the Age of with the theory that a nation can maintain face by Confidence, the American past. And, somehow, they fighting a war with only half a will to win. were the youngest voices at the convention. They Dorothy Thompson, who did some really honest pointed the way not to the past, but to the future. reporting from Chicago, came away impressed with For what they were saying was this: AUlerica the idea that the Republican Party is divided into exists in a world that is round. She is faced by an two types of people, the sophisticated.and the un- enemy that is strong on both her flanks, the eastern JULY28,1952721

and the western. To fight that enemy, we must Security Pact. But Mr. Truman is a law unto him­ have a world policy, a two-front policy. We are self. He ordered Mutual Security aid to Denmark engaged against the enemy actively in Korea. We continued. have friends in Europe, where there is no active This would be just one more display of Mr. Tru­ war at the moment, but these friends must be man's brazen nonchalance toward the country's nerved up in their own behalf or we can not save codified laws-if it were not for the extraordinary them. To fight the war in Asia, and to nerve up advice from Mr. Acheson and the Chief of Mutual our friends in Europe, we must dispose of our Security Aid, AvereB Harriman, on which the energy in the most effective way. We have a rela­ President based his decision. And this, as stated I tively small population, which means that we can by a well-connected Washington correspondent, Ned not raise-and transport-huge ground armies. Russell of the Herald Tribune, was the considered But we have a highly energized productive system, opinion of Messrs. Acheson and Harriman: which means that we can have a devastating 'air armada-a retaliatory rattlesnake-if we will only Denmark is a key geographical unit in the stra­ get busy on it. Meanwhile, we must make sure that tegic concept of the North Atlantic Treaty Organi­ zation. Obviously, stoppage of the American aid pro­ the enemy doesn't undermine us by infiltration in gram would lead· to Denmark's abandonment of its Washington. And we must stop wasting our sub­ role in NATO. Thus ... Denmark is more impor..; stance through inflation and through taxation for tant to the security of the United States than the frivolous or stupid things. tanker is to the security of Russia. Such, in brief, was the message conveyed by the In other words, it is the considered opinion of two oldest-and the two youngest-voices at Chi­ the State Department that any nation important cago. If you listen to those voices now, you can to the security of the United States may feel per­ win the election. And if you continue to listen to fectly free to trade with the enemy. Our allies have them after November, you can save America-and been notified that, so long as we remain exposed to the world. stormy weather, they can spit in our face. And if there has ever been a more blatant case of national self-mutilation, historians have failed to record· it. It is this insane abrogation of our own national A Crest lor Mr. Acheson rights that General MacArthur had in mind when he demolished, in his superb keynote speech to the oW that Denmark has told the United States Republican Convention, the Democratic foreign pol­ N to go and jump in the N'orth Sea, we had bet­ icy. With a true soldier's sure instinct for the vi­ ter try to understand what makes us the butt of tals of national and international power, MacAr... every small nation on earth. The Danes (and we thur separated from the woolly mess of our foreign could not have been insulted by nicer people) may policy the one fundamental, the fatal mistake: that in fact have done us a great service by establishing Mr. Acheson's pattern of collective security agree­ a test case of the coagulated inanity known as ments has "rendered us dependent ... upon the U. S. foreign policy. foreign policies and diplomatic moves of other na­ To recapitulate the fantastic affair. A Danish tions" and that we have thus "become but another shipbuilder was just about to deliver a modern oil pawn in the game of international power politics." tanker to the Soviets when our Ambassador, Mrs. In abstruse but unavoidable consequence, the Eugenie Anderson, presented an official American United States has become a pawn even in the hands note of protest to the Danish Government. The of Denmark or any other miniature nation. Each Battle Act, an essential part of our l\lutual Security of them knows that it can safely discount Ameri­ treaties with Denmark and· all other NATO coun­ can interests-not although but because America tries, forbids recipients of American aid to export is a big power. A peculiar brand of great power, strategic goods to the Soviet Union; and tankers that is-one which is neurotically. afraid of acting are speci'fically listed in the Battle Act. Whereupon like a great power. Roosevelt, Marshall, Truman the Danish Government, demonstratively supported and Acheson have made America reel down the in­ by all five parties in Parliament, ordered the tanker ternational avenues like the overgrown village lout to be delivered anyway. The deal, claimed the whom the kids tease without ever fearing punish­ Danes, was contracted before the Battle Act was ment: too dumb to avoid embarrassment, he is written into the Mutual Security, treaties, and to also too good-hearted to use his giant hands on violate the old contract would mean to violate the fragile youngsters. Danes' strict code of commercial ethics. So, if the And as if that fatal misconception of America's United States did not mind, the Danes would rather role were not enough for one Administration, Mr~ violate their solemn treaty with the United States. Truman's regime adds to it an unparalleled inept­ Our government did not mind, of course. True, ness at diplomatic routine. In this respect, too, the the law of the land directs the President to dis­ Danish tanker affair can serve as a memorable continue all American aid to aNATO country standard case. which breaks any vital provision of the Mutual Before a diplomat delivers a note of protest he 722 THE FREEMAN anticipates and evaluates its reception. This is as suggestion has been advanced since an early Briton elementary in his trade as a plumber's helper's re­ found that the tidiest way to spare a fellow the flex action in making sure that the water is turned nuisance of trimming his beard was to behead him. off before he dismantles the kitchen sink. Even we, not exactly admirers of the incumbent diplomatic team, can not assume that the State Department protested to the Danish Government without ascer­ taining its position. But if the State Department $655, 000 lor Your Thought knew what the Danes were going to say and to do, he Ford Foundation has just staked Professor and if Mr. Acheson was prepared to take it lying T Mortimer J. Adler to a new Institute for Philo­ down, why did his Ambassador protest at all? Just sophical Research in San Francisco which, accord­ for the honor? ing to Dr.- Adler, will have a permanent staff of 25 We do not think so. The State Department, we philosophers and will "promote," to the tune of suspect, was up to a particularly stupid scheme of $655,000, "the advancement of learning through bargain-counter Machiavellianism. They knew the analysis of basic ideas and issues in the thought of Danes would deliver the tanker and scoff at our the Western World." protest-and submitted it for this very effect. It Second to n,one in approving the promotion of was, we think, Mr. Acheson's idea of cleverness: wisdom, we were delighted to see old Henry Ford's to counter the "neutralist" propaganda that the money roll Dr. Adler's way, but we kept wondering United States is bossing the small European na­ how such a bundle of cash could be spent on the tions, he may well ha~e deliberately manufactured proverbially inexpensive search for truth. St. this blatant evidence to the contrary. Thomas Aquinas, as Professor Adler could so know­ In a sense,we hope, all this is whipping a dead ingly bear us out, had no other foundation to sup­ horse. Mr. Acheson, we trust, will soon retire to port him than the Rock of Ages. And we doubt his lucrative private practice of law (in association that the world's great philosophers, who will now with Mr. Donald Hiss)-on which occasion the be treated in Dr. Adler's clinic, have in the three British, who have lately been showering him with thousand years of their combined enterprise in­ honorary degrees, may even knight him. If they vested more than half of what Professor Adler has do, we can suggest no more appropriate crest than at his disposal. Granted that a penny is no longer a red herring ona piece of Danish pastry. what it used to be, we were curious to learn about the kind of thought for which the Ford Founda­ tion was willing to give $655,000. Here is all the information we could gather. His Those Mature British new Institute, explained Dr. Adler, "will not be interested in answers to questions but to know, in ere Americans, as we all know, lack political each case, what the question is." This, we thought, M maturity, the true statesman's sense of mod­ we could tell him for almost nothing, but when Dr. eration and, above all, diplomatic finesse. Always Adler explained the rules of his new game we eager to admire these qualities in our superior realized that the Ford Foundation was getting a friends, the British, we followed attentively the bargain. recent House of Commons debate on the proper Dr. Adler illustrated his revolutionary method course for the Korean truce negotiations. Nothing by citing the question, "Is democracy' a Good impressed us more than the sage prescription for Thing?" "Two men [and now we are quoting what a workable compromise submitted by Labor leader he told the New York Times] will say that it is Aneurin Bevan: good-or bad-for two conflicting reasons. No at­ tempt will be made necessarily to find out whether If the American' Administration ... will give effective assurances to the Chinese People's govern­ it is good or bad, but at what points there can be ment that they accept the Chinese revolution as an agreement between the two." A tough game, accomplished fact; that they are prepared to accept tougher even than Canasta; but economy-minded [Red] China on the Security Council; that they are lovers of truth might object that Socrates, bare­ prepared to disband Chiang Kai-shek's forces in foot in Athens, used similar tricks in a walk around Formosa •.. the armistice could succeed quite easily. some noisy market place. They would be wrong. It What realism, what moderation! Note that Mr. takes 25 staff philosophers a heck of a long time Bevan, with characteristic British reticence and and-the price of groceries in San Francisco being consideration for the feelings of allies, refrained what it is-a lot of money to think up two conflict­ from demanding that California be handed over to ing reasons on which an agreement can be reached Mao and that General MacArthur be sent before a concerning democracy. North-Korean firing squad. Mr. Bevan's graceful Pondering the game for quite a while ourselves, reluctance will be deeply appreciated in this coun­ we could think of only one question to which all 25 try and will only add persuasiveness to his pro­ Adlerians would find a unanimous answer in a posal. Indeed, no more profound and yet_practical jiffy: "Is the Ford Foundation a Good Thing?" The Self-Reliant South

By MARGARET COLLINS a.nd Two Hforeigners" from the North have found that what Yankees regard a,s S,authern backwardness FL,ETCHER COLLINS, JR. is just the old American attitud,e toward life.

In this time of earnest attempts at unity with as picture is a majority of the Southern population. much of mankind as will have us, many of our best This majority, surprisingly enough, live quite people have been hard put to understand a large decent lives on their farms or in small towns. Most section of our own United States. Such varied pub­ of them are descended from generations of small lications as Life, Look and Harpers have hopefully landholders, and the pattern of their living today observed the signs of aNew South; but when the has its sources mainly in the economy of the small chips are down, and Congress in session, it becomes farmer. The cultural conservatism (lag, the soci­ obvious that converts to the New South, however ologists call it) of the Southerner is nowhere bet­ evangelistic, are still in the minority. The South is ter exemplified than in the persistence of this econ­ still solid, and the filibuster is still with us. Ap­ omy. It is not only the pattern for full-time farmers parently the majority of Southerners continue to but" also governs the economic activity of the bank­ share a political creed which is not only anti-civil ers and clerks and janitors and mill-workers of the rights but also anti-labor, anti-Fair Deal, and Southern small town. the despair of all "liberals." The bankers have cattle farms in the country Northerners often deplore this creed as the fruit and invest their personal profits and savings more of an illiterate, impoverished and backward society, in Hereford cattle than in Hartford insurance. A while they ignore the fact that thousands of edu­ college janitor stops a drama professor in the hall cated Southerners subscribe to the creed for other to ask whether he knows anything to do for some reasons than illiteracy or lack of con5cience. The ewes down with pneumonia. A college president Yankees, disgusted at Southern inefficiency and goes home for Christmas and helps his father low standards of living, are convinced that the butcher a couple of hogs. A lawyer and state sena­ South can be saved only by becoming more indus­ tor is encountered in his undershirt at the country trial. Among Southerners there have been some mill which grinds feed for his cattle and hogs, converts to this idea, notably in piedmont North though he lives in town and works in barristers' Carolina; but by and large the South suspects that row. The driver of an oil delivery truck asks how the New South is the Old North and wants no part you like farming on contoured strips and tells you of it. he has begun to do that to his farm. The colored Actually, political, beliefs are the result of a way fireman at a lime plant rents a couple of idle acres of life. The virtual unanimity of Southern political on plant premises and raises twenty to thirty hogs opinion simply reflects the fact that ways of life a year on scraps collected from boarding-school are, in important respects, still different north and kitchens. A group of textile-mill workers, having a south of the Mason and Dixon line. beer after the shift is over, talk of crops and rush From where we sit-born, raised and schooled off to plow or mow before dark. in the North and after fifteen years in the South still neophytes in its way of life-our Northern The Source of Southern Strength friends and journalists are barking up the wrong tree. The old, stubborn, recalcitrant South, more These small-towners have one foot on the land, than the new, deserves their interest and sympathy. the full-time farmer two. The strength of the The current method of appraising the Old South Southern economy is in no small part owing to this is to compare the worst it has produced with the cohesive pattern which permits banker and mer­ best of modern America. Much is made of the un­ chant and farmer to speak the same economic lan­ godly system of one-crop farm tenancy, that rural guage, to share economic interests. It inhibits the version of mill town and company store. Much is growth of invidious distinctions between city and also made of a decadent aristocracy which pre­ country folk, keeps the farmer contented on his sumably, unable either to preserve its old world or farm and the. small-towner wary of economic so­ to live in the new, has escaped into dreams and phistries. liquor. According to this version the Old South is To speak of the strength of the Southern econ­ entirely populated by the citizens of Tobacco Road omy requires further explanation, so deeply has a and the melancholy, half-insane occupants of the caricature penetrated the minds of Americans out­ decaying Big House. All that is left out of this side the South. Indeed, judged by modern statistical 724 THE FREEMAN standards, the Southern economy is pretty bad. income produce capital which produces more in­ The indices of prosperity used by sociologists to come. And the so-called Little Man, dear to "lib­ determine the standard of living are dramatically eral" hearts, can build up capital only through low for the whole Southern area. Tourists observe frugal and ingenious living. He invests his cash, with pity the number of farms that show outwardly not in gilt-edged stock but in livestock, machinery, a lack of plumbing within. Miles of farn1er-owned land. He spends little on an automObile, which pro­ telephone lines look· rickety and incompetent. Half duces nothing, and much on a tractor. Little on the farms are without electricity. Thousands of plumbing, much on cattle. Little on a dishwasher, homes lack central heating. The Southerner's auto­ if he has electricity, much on a milking-machine. mobile is likely to have the old look and apparently For his future economic security, instead of invest­ the owner doesn't care. ing in savings bonds, insurance and retirement Per capita educational expenditure is another plans, he looks to enlarging his own capital, as point at which the South compares to its disadvan­ represented by cattle and tractor and truck. Except tage in statistical tables. County and state tax­ at the moment of liquidation, when he is often rates are low. Annual cash income, the sociologists' worth thousands, he may appear to be worth very basic index to prosperity, concludes the bill of par­ little. Lo, the poor Southerner! ticulars. How the Southerner goes down on this one! He is apparently Uncle Sam's poor relation. Prosperity, Southern Style The fallacy in this indictment is that the South­ erner, having at least one foot on the land, does not The son-in-law of a neighbor moved in with his depend exclusively on cash income. He has an wife's parents on a farm near us, and our surmise equivalent income from the products of the land: was that he was a victim of the city housing green vegetables canned or frozen; dairy products; shortage. Casually this ex-GI, who works in a root vegetables stored from November to April; nearby textile mill, told us tha~ he owns two houses frozen meat from cattle, chickens and hogs; fuel in town. Later he came around with a dozen bushels from lopwood and slabs; and free water from well of winter apples to sell "reasonable." He had bought or cistern. This equivalent income, common among the picking rights to an orchard a few miles away, farms in all cultures, should by rights be expressed and expected to .clear about $150 in two weeks of in money terms and added to the statistics on cash spare-time picking. One of these days he will liqui­ income in the South. date his real estate and savings account to acquire But the subsistence factor is not the only key to a good farm. Meanwhile he helps his father-in-law understanding the role of cash in the Southern with milking, hay-making, harvesting and the other economy, for it leaves unexplained what the South­ farm jobs. His wife helps her mother with canning, erner does with the folding money he does receive, butchering, cooking for harvest hands. The· son-in­ and where it comes from. What would the sociolo­ law, city-raised, is learning from an expert how to gists say of our neighbor who receives us one day operate his own farm competently. Young man on barefooted in a back bedroom where the family the make, Southern style. gathers around·a barrel stove, and the next·greets One thinks of another neighbor, the younger son us heartily in town where he has just pulled $1100 of a not-too-prosperous farmer. The elder sons left from his jeans to pay cash for a new truck? Or the farm. The father died leaving debts all over another whose house has no plumbing, but who the county. The younger son took over the farm, always has a "few dollars laying around"-$500 to the debts and the support of his mother. He mar­ $1000 to buy cattle or sheep? Or of a third who ried and brought his bride to the old place; they recently sold his livestock for $3000, although his worked and saved together, gradually paid off the house had neither plumbing nor electricity and its debts, and built a four-room cottage across the entire contents weren't worth a hundred dollars? lane for themselves and the children. He bought a These people are not eccentrics. They have been dump truck on installments, and rented himself chosen as random examples. They are not offered and truck to the State Highway Department. Later as proof. that all prosperous Southerners live wi~h­ he hired a driver for the truck. He bought a trac­ out plumbing, or that the citizens of Tobacco Road tor and equipment therefor, on installments, and are disguised millionaires. Rather they suggest does contract work. on farms for miles around. that cash income and standard of living are far Everything he now owns is paid for, everything he from reliable guides to Southern prosperity~ The buys is for cash on the barrelhead. Rags to riches, South abounds in men who look as if they were not Southern style. worth a hundred dollars but whose assets are more Out of these biographies, which may be regarded substantial than those of many a junior executive as fairly typical, emerges an economic philosophy. living among his impressive gadgets on suburban One tenet is the necessity of building up capital, Long Island. To appraise the Southern economy even from the smallest of incomes. You put your accurately, one must re-examine the tenets of the earnings into productive articles; and you buy as farm economy from which the Southerner derives. little as you can, depending rather on raising most Primarily the Southerner's aim is to make his of your food, making some of the simpler equip- JULY28,1952725 ment and being your own service and repairs de­ Any man who is at once landlord and share.. partment. The South has long been noted for its cropper, his own boss and working for hire, gains slogan, "make it yourself or do without," but the an ,experience of the difficulties of both worker and outsider usually interprets this slogan as a counsel capitalist. He does not generalize so readily about of despair rather than the sound economic approach the Boss or Us Working People, but thinks of that it is. others as individuals and of himself less as a Little Another tenet closely allied to the first is belief Man or a Working Man than as a man. He dis­ in the sin of waste. There is no problem of garbage covers that his attitudes and frustrations in work­ disposal in rural areas; what folks don't eat, hogs ing for another are different from those he feels will. To live in the country and not have at least in working for himself. As a worker, he is pre­ one hog is to operate wastefully. But the most occupied with rights; as a boss-man with risk and common evidence of the immorality of waste ap­ responsibility. pears in any harvesting operation. Harvesting by combines has not found much favor because the Each Man DisOwn Security combine spoils the by-product for fodder. With amazement and disgust a Southern farmer beholds The Southerner is close to being the unspecial­ the vast combinings in Middle-Western fields. His ized whole man whom Emerson a century ago saw comment is, "Why, they waste more than we make." disintegrating under the new industrial order. His Our best farmers are zealous gleaners in the fields; economic interests challenge his imagination and no wisp of hay, no leaf of corn, is passed by. ability to learn in many fields rather than hold pre­ The Southern wage earner thinks of a job as a cariously to a specialized function and partial re­ cash crop. His first earnings often go to secure a sponsibility. Business, to him, is still personal. He piece of land, chickens, hogs, and maybe a cow. is never too busy to talk. Contracts are often ver­ From then on, if he loses his job, he need not bal, paper-work at a minimum. Most important of starve. If wages are low, he still has his living; if all, few men in his part of the world are afraid of high, he has more to save. He prefers to own his their jobs-in contrast to fear-ridden millions in home, be it only one room, rather than "waste" industrial America. The Southerner can take his money on rent. Though modern pressures are mak­ job or leave it-and often does leave it when the ing heavy inroads on his philosophy, he is still fish begin to bite or squirrel season is on. likely to have a farmer's attitude toward debt. He What the Southern Little Man is attempting will borrow to buy the means of production but through his version of free enterprise is a solution thinks it folly to go into debt for consumer's goods of the central dilemma posed by modern indus­ which produce nothing and depreciate before they trialism: how to achieve security without sacri­ are paid for. ficing independence. The Southern philosophy is From these patterns of daily life emerges the essentially the farmer's philosophy that security Southerner's point of view toward his family. If, and independence are the same thing. If another in order to save cash for capital, he must produce man can give you security, you haven't got it, for his own living, his wife becomes a necessary part­ he can also take it away. This simple and classic ner and his children economic assets rather than formula disposes of bosses as well as bureaucrats. liabilities. This necessity produces consequences From this thumbnail sketch of the economic as various and far-reaching as large families, early Southerner the inference seems plausible that the marriage and infrequent divorce, young people ac­ conservatism of the South is a conservation, not customed to less schooling and more adult respon­ only of resources but also of the philosophy of sibilities. Boys of ten drive tractors, handle a four­ Thomas Jefferson and the American pioneer. Our horse hay load, and at twelve are experienced colonial pioneers became freemen able to make a farmers, mechanics, carpenters. They reach young living on their own, able to look any man in the manhood with attitudes toward capital, profit and eye and tell him to go to hell. This most American risk, enterprise and hard work, which are not vastly strain dwindled in the North as industrialization different from those of their fathers. progressed, yet persisted in the South. The South­ These young people know as well as their dads erner's economic pattern is, then, directly descended that there is only one way to accumulate capital, from that of earlier pioneers, and is not so much and that is from surplus-money saved either by out of date as dateless. It worked then and it works oneself or by someone else. This fact affects the now. Southerner's whole attitude. toward capital and A modern parable illustrates the situation and property. If he borrows, he thinks it only fair to the potentiality. Some years ago a progressive pay for the use of another man's savings. If he community cut down the fine old maples on Main saves, he knows he must spend less than, he makes. Street in order to make room for the trolley-line. His capital is his labor, and because it represents Now the trolleys have been supplanted by busses, to him the sweat of his brow, he has an immense but Main Street has no maples. The South is the respect for it. He is likely to carry this respect town that didn't cut down the old maples, because over to other men's capital. it missed out on the Trolley-Car phase of Progress. Consumers Union: A Red Front

One of the most effective Communist fronts, By LARSTON D. FARRAR und,er the. guise of protecting the consumer, conducts a war upon the Am,ericarn economy.

Last year Americans-mostly loyal Americans­ this, the Communists called a strike and tried to paid some $2,500,000 into the coffers of a Com­ destroy the organization. munist front, the Consumers Union of the U. S., Arthur Kallet, director of CU since it broke Inc. The organization's monthly .magazine, Con­ away from Consumers Research, has been identi­ sumer Reports, has secured half a million sub­ fied with Communist movements for almost two scribers since its founding in 1936. The pro-Com­ decades. The files of the House Committee on un­ munist origin and slant of Consumers Union (CD) American Activities show that his Communist has been exposed intermittently for a decade, yet Party name was Edward Adams. Only recently its influence continues to grow. While other Com­ counsel for the Committee advised this reporter to munist fronts have been changing color or wither­ ignore Kallet's protestations, since there is an open ing beneath the glare of unfavorable publicity, CD invitation for him to come before the Committee has led a charmed life. and deny under oath any affiliation with the Com­ Perhaps no single fact illustrates the confusion munists. The inference to be drawn from· his fail­ of the present Administration more aptly than that ure to appear is either that Kallet is a Comillunist -though Consumers Union is listed five times by but does not want to admit it publicly, or that he the House Committee on Un-American Activities fears to deny it publicly lest he be indicted for as a Communist front-the Office of Price Stabili­ perjury. zation,an agency of the Executive Branch, actually Kallet was a member of the staff of the now­ has appointed Mrs. Jean Whitehill, managing edi­ defunct Health and Hygiene, the magazine of the tor of Consumer Reports, to serve on the OPS Con­ Daily Worker Medical Advisory Board. In a book, sumer Advisory Committee for the nation. "Counterfeit," he wrote: During its sixteen years of existence, Consumers Union has grown from a small offshoot of Con­ Goods counterfeiting can not be ended so long as it pays; that is, so long as industry is privately sumers Research (which is definitely not commu­ owned and profits are the motivating force behind nistic) into the dominant consumer movement in production; and to suggest any easy remedy would the nation, virtually blanketing the libraries-edu­ be to offer only one more counterfeit to consumers. cational and public-and even gaining some ac­ In a footnote to that statement he added: "The ceptance among industrial leaders. It has received reader may ask the pertinent question as to how wide recognition in academic circles. At Vassar completely goods counterfeiting has been elimi­ College last summer, for example, the organization nated, along with private industry, in Soviet Rus­ was a co-sponsor, by invitation, of a three-day con­ sia." ference on consumer problems. According to an interview given to a writer for Although CU is not the entire American con­ Scribner's Magazine for November 1937, Kallet's sumer movement, its officers are past masters at views were set forth in the following statement: issuing statements which make it seem that any attack upon their organization is an attack upon He [Kallet] will tell anyone that he dislikes/ our the movement as a whole. The CU spokesmen have economic system, that he feels it is doomed, and that consistently denied any Communist connections he hopes the Russian system works out so well that we shall be compelled to adopt it. and pooh-poohed those who mention such things. The proof that CU has been dominated by Com­ The two persons who, with Kallet, were most ac­ munists from its very inception is not difficult to tive in the formation of CU were Susan Jenkins, a obtain. J. B. Matthews, one of America's noted longtime employee of the Daily Worker, and Walter authorities on communistn, was an official of Con­ Trumbull (now deceased), who was court-martialed sumers Research at the time of the strike which in 1925 and sentenced to a 26-year term as a Com­ precipitated the organization of CU. He has testi­ munist attempting to bore from within the U. S. fied under oath that Earl Browder, then head of Army. Trumbull was freed several years later, long the Communist Party in America, told him to gain before he led the strike against Consumers Re­ control of the consumer movement and force out search as an AFL organizer. Frederick Schlink (then and now head of Con­ Robert A. Brady, a director of CD, was one of sumers Research). When Matthews refused to do the signers of an open letter of 1939-on the eve JULY 28, 1952 727

of Stalin's pact with Hitler-which praised the was attempting to assassinate Frank Jacson, the Soviet Union and denounced all Americans who murderer of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940. ... The FBI had information that representatives "bracket the Soviet Union with Fascist States." of this espionage group had offered a Mexican prison Malcolm Cowley, a sponsor of CU, was on the official a bribe of $25,000 for permission to allow a .A.dvisory Board of the American League for Peace Comintern agent to approach Jacson closely enough and Democracy; on the National Executive Com­ to kill him. Secret writings, in letters addressed to mittee of its predecessoi", the American League the Altschuler "apparatus" showed a detailed plan for Jacson's assassination. Against War and Fascism; a signer of the Call for a Congress of American Revolutionary Writers. Matthew Josephson, sponsor of CU, was a mem­ As a member of the National Committee of the ber of the League of Professional Groups for Fos­ American Friends of the Soviet Union, he signed ter and Ford, Communist Party candidates. Kath­ its Golden Book of American Friendship with the leen McInerney, a director of CU, was formerly Soviet Union. - secretary of the League of Women Shoppers, a Jerome Davis, a director and sponsor of CU, was Communist "transmission belt." Anna Louise a guiding light in the League Against War and Strong, sponsor of CU, was founder and assistant Fascism, vice chairman of the National Committee editor of the Moscow Daily News. of the American League for Peace and Democracy. The labor advisory committee of CU includes In the book, "Soviet Russia in the Second Decade," two well-known Communists-Ben Gold, head of he was author of two laudatory chapters. the Fur Workers International Union, whose cita­ Kate Crane Gartz, a sponsor of CU, was a con­ tions by the House Committee on Un-American Ac­ tributor to the Young Workers Communist League tivities number more than 200, and Louis Wein­ and purchased advertising space in the Daily stock, formerly an official of the Painters Union Worker to greet Communists. who is now on trial for violation of the Smith Act: A. J. Isserman, long the attorney for CU, ap­ which means conspiracy to advocate the overthrow peared first before the House Committee on Un­ of the government. American Activities as counsel for the Interna­ tional Labor Defense, a well-known party auxiliary. Birds of a Feather He has received nation-wide notoriety many times since, particularly for his "disgraceful" perform­ CD has maintained close and cordial working re­ ance (according to the judge) in defending the lationships with Communist and Communist-front eleven top Communist leaders against charges of publications. According to the former managing conspiracy to overthrow the U. S. Government. editor of the Sunday Worker, the CU files, were at Following that trial Isserman was sentenced to the disposal of the staff of this Communist news­ four months in the Federal penitentiary for crimi­ paper, and it was understood that any material nal contempt in connection with his role of defense from CD was to be given space in the Worker on counsel. He is now serving that sentence. request whenever possible. The International Work­ The Medical Section of Consumer Reports is ers Order, now dissolved by court order, was on edited by Dr. Harold Aaron, who is listed as special the Attorney General's subversive list. Its maga­ medical adviser to CU. He has been a frequent zine, the Fraternal Outlook, reprinted many articles contributor to the Sunday Worker. from Consumer Reports and frequently put in edi­ Milo Lathrop, listed on the masthead of Con­ torial plugs for CU. sumer Reports as field representative and staff as­ In the files of the New Masses, Soviet Russia sociate, refused to tell a Congressional subcommit­ Today and Fight, all Communist sheets, may also tee whether or not he was or ever had been a mem­ be found frequent advertisements and nraise for ber of the Communist Party. A former candidate CU. It is noteworthy, too, that virtualiy all the for City Council posts in Schenectady, N'ew York, newspapers of the extreme left-wing unions have Lathrop has admitted in conversations with ac­ carried laudatory references to CU. quaintances that he is an active member of the The most recent report of the House Committee Communist Party, according to sworn testimony of on Un-American Activities on the Consumers Union witnesses before the House Committee on Un­ appears on page 42 of its publication of March 3, American Activities. 1951, "Guide to Subversive Organizations and Pub­ Lydia Altschuler, for many years educational di­ lications." This lists citations of CD as a Com­ rector of CU, was a Communist spy, according to munist front by five different groups.l sworn testimony before the House Committee on Through this report the news that CU is a Com­ Un-American Activities. FBI agent Larry Kerley munist front finally reached the attention of the testified as follows: Boards of Education in Dayton and Cincinnati,

I Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Report March 29 I was also assigned to check on another spy "ap­ 1944, p. 153; California Committee on Un-American Adtivities, Re: paratus" with headquarters on Perry Street New port, 1943, p. 102; Special Subcommittee of the House Committee York City. This was the home of a woman ~amed on Al?propriat~ons, Repor~, April 21, 1943, p. 3; New York City CounCIl CommIttee InvestIgating the Municipal Civil Service Com­ Lydia Altschuler. Her home was a base of opera­ mission; Penns~lvania .Commo1'lwealth Counsel before the reviewing tions for a Communist international group which board of the Pblladelobta County Board of Assistance. January 1942. 728 THE FREEMAN

Ohio, which banned Consumer Reports from the Communists understand that advertising performs public schools. Variety for June 20, 1951, stated: an indispensable function in a mass production econ­ omy, and that advertising is an economic process, In Cincinnati, the magazine has been a recom­ wholly apart from questions which have to do with mended reference work in public schools. In Day­ good or bad advertising copy, and is as essential a ton, it has not been used in instructional situations, part of the distributive mechanism as are railroads but has been in the libraries of high schools. Copies and retail outlets. Therefore, Communists believe were removed and the subscriptions were cancelled. that to sabotage and destroy advertising, and through Spokesmen for the publisher in New York said its destruction to undermine and help destroy the the charges of the government were not justified.... capitalist system of free enterprise, is a revolution­ ary tactic worthy of a great deal of attention.... J ames Ratliff in the Cincinnati Enquirer of June [This Committee] is in possession of evidence which 16, 1951, pointed out: shows that a great part of the current popular and official attack upon advertising is the direct result Consumer Reports makes a good case study of a of Communist propaganda. ... "front." It is difficult to detect any Red propaganda The publications of these Communist transmission in this magazine, most of which is taken up with re­ belts, such as Consumers Union, make it clear that ports of testing various consumer merchandise. Con­ some of the current government procedures against sequently, the advocates of "civil liberties" will have advertising and advertising media have been insti­ a field day denouncing the ban. They will comment gated and are being aided by those consumer organi­ that dictatorship began in Germany when Hitler's zations which are under the control of Communists.. gang started to burn books, etc. . .. . Wherever Communists have been able to penetrate educational institutions with their propaganda, they As early as June 21, 1939, George Sokolsky have taken along with them their anti-advertising warned the Advertising Federation of America at agitation as a regular feature of their broad attack its annual convention in New York, of the true na­ upon the system of free enterprise. This agitation ture of CU, then three years old. A comparison of has been going on for years and is now being re­ a portion of his address with the "news" report on flected in government circles as well as in large sec­ tions of the population which are wholly unconscious it which was published in the New York Times is of any influence of Communist propaganda.... interesting. Here is what Mr. Sokolsky said, according to his Consumers Union derives its income from sub- mimeographed speech: scription fees. Anyone who subscribes may vote in the election of officers, held each year, but it is Consumers Union is definitely part of the united noteworthy that the management has remained front of Communist organizations in the United firmly in Kallet's hands. States. Its definitive objective is not to inform the public as to the value and quality of goods, but it is The organization states that its purposes are "to to conduct a constant and unending and vindictive provide for consumers information and counsel on and uncompromi~ing campaign for the alteration of consumer goods and services ... to give informa­ the American way of life by changing our way of tion and assistance on all matters relating to the production and distribution from a privately-owned means of production and distribution to a govern­ expenditure of the family income ... to initiate ment-controlled and possibly a government-owned and to cooperate with individual and group efforts and managed means of production and distribution. seeking to create and maintain decent living stand­ ards." In order to carry out these purposes, Con­ Here is the pertinent excerpt from the Times sumers Union claims that "samples of products story of the next morning: tested are bought on the open market by CU shop­ Addresses ranging from a plea for cooperation pers." The statement continues: "Ratings are based with consumers by Clarence Francis, president of on laboratory tests, cC?ntrolled use tests, expert General Foods, to an indictment of research organi­ opinion or experience, or a combination of these zations identified with the consumer movement, by George Sokolsky, author, were heard.... factors. It is CU's pledge that any opinions eflter­ ing into its ratings shall be as free from bias as it Of course Mr. Sokolsky did not attack consumer is possible to make them." res.earch "organizations." He exposed one of them. The latter sentence may well be true of the small number of products-compared to the thousands The War on American Business upon thousands of goods issued by American in­ dustry each year-which CU tests in a laboratory CU's most subtle propaganda is achieved through it maintains hard by Union Square in New York attacks on American business and praise for gov­ City. It is even probable that CD, if it had the fa­ ernment controls. Nothing in .the editorial columns cilities to make comprehensive and adequate tests of Consumer Reports could be remotely interpreted (which it doubtless does not have at this \time, ex- as against big government or more government cept for various small items, such as hosiery), controls. In fact, CU maintained a lobby in Wash­ would never deign to discriminate among the pri­ ington to fight to keep OPA controls after World vately-owned businesses of America. Its goal, it War II. seems apparent from a study of its sponsors and To discredit advertising is an important CU ob­ officials, is not to build. up one business at the ex­ jective. As J. B. Matthews pointed out in a report pense of another, but to disparage and help destroy to the House Coromittee : our system of private enterprise. People on Our Side, II

A Rebirth of Liberalism By F. A. HAYEK

When the first World War ended, the intellectual In their simplicity, clarity, and the common tradition of liberalism was well-nigh dead. It still sense they exude, these essays remain exemplary for dominated many men of affairs: quite a few lead­ the discussion of economic problems; and even ers in politics and business still belonged to a some of the essays written before 1914 retain are­ generation for which liberal thought was self­ markable timeliness. But his greatest achievement understood, and their utterances may often have is the group of disciples Cannan educated in his evoked a belief in the general public that a return long years at the London School of Economics, a to a liberal economy remained a highly desirable group which later grew into the perhaps most im­ objective. But the intellectual forces active at that portant center of neo-liberal thought. That group time already pointed in an entirely different direc­ was considerably stimulated by the works of 'an tion. Those who three decades ago were familiar Austrian thinker whom I shall presently discuss. with the minds of the aspiring youth, and especially The oldest of Cannan's disciples, the renowned with the opinions taught in the colleges, could fore­ financial expert, Sir Theodore Gregory, exerted see that things would develop in an altogether dif­ great influence on the young during his long years ferent way from what statesmen and newspapers as a professor at the London School of Economics; were still anticipating. For three decades ago there but he long ago retired from teaching. The real hardly existed a vital world of liberal thought center of.the group, formed in the thirties at the capable of inspiring the younger generation. London School by somewhat younger economists, Liberal thought, nevertheless, not only emerged all about the same age, was Lionel Robbins who from the pit to which it had been condemned for has occupied Cannan's chair for 23 years. A rare fifteen or twenty postwar years, but in that very combination of systematizing acumen and literary period a new foundation was laid for its further gifts has assured his books a large circulation. growth. For this, almost all the credit must go to Sir Arnold Plant, who has been active at the those few men whose work I propose to consider in School almost as long as Robbins, has even more this article. They certainly were not the only ones than Cannan the habit of hiding his most important who tried to preserve and expand the liberal tradi­ contributions in little-known occasional essays., But tion. But it seems to me that they alone, in sepa­ his friends have long and eagerly expected from rate endeavors and independent one from the other, him a book about the foundation and the meaning succeeded in educating disciples and initiating new of private property-a book which, when at last traditions which have at last merged into a com­ published, should be one of the most important con­ mon current of effective thought. tributions to the theory of modern liberalism. That it took so long until the similarly directed There is no room here to enumerate all of Can­ efforts of an Englishman, an Austrian and an nan's disciples. But merely to indicate the radius American were recognized as such, and could then of his influence I should like to name F. C. Benham, serve as the common basis for the work of a younger W. H. Hutt and F. W. Paish (who, though not a generation, is quite understandable under the cir­ disciple of Cannan, clearly belongs to that group). cumstances of the preceding one. At any rate the new school of liberalism ,builds consciously on the The Influence of'Ludwig von Mises achievements of those three men. The oldest and perhaps least known outside his In some respects it could be said that Cannan, own country was the Englishman, Edwin Cannan, essentially, was preparing the ground in England who died twenty years ago. The role he was play­ for the ideas of a considerably younger Austrian ing attracted little attention outside some narrow who, since the early twenties, has been building a circles because the primary field of his scholarly new edifice of liberal thought more consistently, concern lay elsewhere and' he discussed'problems more systematically and more successfully than of economics only in rather occasional and casual anyone else. I am of course referring to Ludwig essays; and perhaps also because he was' more in­ von Mises who was for many years active in Vienna, terested in practical detail than in fundamental later in Geneva, and is today very active indeed in questions of philosophy. But many of his essays in New York. economics, subsequently collected in two volumes Having attained fame even before the first World ("The Economic Outlook," 1912, and HAn Econo­ War with his theory of money, Mises began irnme,­ mist's Protest," 1927), even today merit republica" diately after the war, with his prophetic book uNa­ tion and translation. into other languages, tion,Staat undWirtschaft"U'Nation, State and 730 THE FREEMAN

Economy," 1919), an intellectual career which in studies in the fields of economics and social philos­ 1922 had already reached a magnificent zenith in ophy first appeared as essays, and not all of them his great ItDie Gemeinwirtschaft" ("The Collec­ have been collected in book form. Knight's best­ tivistEconomy"). It was a general critique of known and perhaps most characteristic volume is practically all economic ideologies presented seri­ "The Ethics ofCompetition, and Other Essays" ously and articulately. (1935) . I can not list here all the important writings be­ But even more forcefully than through his writ­ tween this first magnum opus of Ludwig von Mises ings Knight performed as a teacher! It is hardly and his second-his Nationalokonomie, published an exaggeration to say that almost all those younger in Geneva in 1941 (in German). This work was American economists who today understand and later republished, in an expanded American version, promote a market economy were once his·disciples. as "Human Action," and in this form has achieved In the context of this survey, the most important a success almost unique for a theoretical book of among them is the late Henry C. Simons whose such tremendous scope. pamphlet, itA Positive Program for Laissez Faire," What Mises offers is much more than economics as e41rly as the thirties offered a new common basis in its narrow sense. His penetrating studies of the for the efforts of America's younger liberals. philosophical bases of social science and his extra­ In lieu of the systematic opus we were entitled to ordinary historical knowledge make his work re­ expect from him, Simons left at his untimely death semble that of the great social philosophers of the only a collection of essays, published in 1948 under eighteenth century much more than the labors of a the title "Economic Policy For A Free Society." contemporary expert. His uncompromising per­ But thanks to the abundance of his thought, and sistence invited violent opposition and even enmity. the courage with which he approached such delicate Scholastic recognition came peculiarly late. His problems as unionism, they had great influence. work was slow to achieve influence, but the final His closest friend, Aaron Director (who edited effect was the greater and deeper for that. Simons's posthumous writings and continued his Even to many of his personal disciples the un­ research), and two of the best-known American erring consistency with which Mi'Ses thought his theoreticians, George Stigler and Milton Friedman, thoughts through to their ultimate conclusions form the core of the American group of like-minded often seem~d "exaggerated." But the seeming pes­ economists, a group which is today by no means simism with which he foretold the consequences of limited to the school of Chicago. the economic policies of his day proved correct each If it were not for the venerable rule that heads time-a fact that finally convinced ever-widening of great nations must not be claimed for a specific circles of the fundamental importance of Mises's school of economics, I could now name a fourth work which stood so firmly against the prevailing scholar who, in his own country, was hardly less currents. influential than the other three.1 Instead, and to Not even during his early Viennese years did complete the picture, I should like to turn to the Mises lack personal disciples, most of whom are German group. now working in the United States (among them Contrary to the other groups, the German school Gottfried von Haberler at Harvard, Fritz Machlup of neo-liberalism does not descend directly from an at Johns Hopkins, and this writer). But his in­ older generation. It originated in the cooperation fluence reached far beyond his personal circle. For of several younger men who, before Hitler's acces;. he alone has given us a conclusive treatment of all sion to power, shared a common interest in a lib­ economic and social thought. Whether or not one eral economy. But there can be hardly a doubt that concurs with him in every detail, there is hardly a this group received a decisive stimulation from the relevant subject in that realm on which a reader of writings of Ludwig von Mises. Before 1933 they his works can not obtain instruction and decisive had published but little themselves, and in 1933 stimulation. some of them were dispersed all over the world. One of the group's oldest members, Walter Eucken (then relatively unknown), remained in Professor Knight and the Chicago School Germany. Today we know that his sudden death Mises exerted a strong influence not only on the two years ago took from our midst one of the circles of Vienna and London but finally also on a truly great minds. He had matured slowly, with­ third group-the Chicago school of neo-liberal held publication for a long time, and devoted him­ thought, whose real founder was Professor Frank self mainly to teaching and practical affairs. How H.Knight. Knight is a few years younger than bene,ficial and productive his quiet work had been Mises, and he, too, attained his initial reputation even throughout the National Socialist period be­ with a theoretical treatise, "Risk, Uncertainty and came known only after the nightmare was over, Profits" (1921)-a study at first relatively unno­ when the circle of his friends and disciples emerged ticed, then esteemed for many years as one of the best textbooks of economic thought (even though 1 Dr. Hayek, if we maybe forgiv~n a slight transgress·it:Ju of his strict interdict, is of course alluding tl;) the President of Italy, Pro­ it was not intended to be one). Almost all his later fessor Einaudi. THE EDITORS. JULY 28, 1952 731

as the fountainhead of economic reason in Ger­ The Economics of Freedom many. In that period, too, Eucken's first book be­ gan to exert a greater influence, and he undertook to expand his economic theory in several other Government by Boards studies. It remains to be seen how many of them can"'be salvaged. At any rate, Ordo, the annals he By LE,O WOLM:AN founded, keeps functioning as the most important organ of the whole movement. Big government, with which the United States and Most intimately connected with Walter Eucken many other countries in the world are today af­ from the start was the second leading figure of the flicted, imposes its will on its citizens by confis­ group, Wilhelm Roepke. So prominently had he cating an ever-increasing share of their income participated in Germany's public life even before and by regulating their conduct through the rul­ 1933 that he had to leave his country the very ings of numerous administrative boards. Both of moment Hitler came to power. First active in Is­ these elements of contemporary government grow tanbul, and now for many years in Switzerland, together. Each new function of the State requires this most fertile author of the whole group is today additional funds and each new activity requires for so well-known, and his entirely personal brand of its administration an additional agency. Hence effective argument so familiar to the readers of government budgets constantly expand and admin­ this journal2 that I hardly need do more than men­ istrative agencies multiply without end. tion his name. If the existence of a neo-liberal Since changes in the form and scope of govern­ movement is known beyond the brotherhood of the ment are as a rule justified by an appropriate legal experts, we owe it mainly to Wilhelm Roepke. or political theory, it follows that government by As I mentioned before, all these groups, formed administrative board devised its own particular during the last thirty years, came to know and to theoretical sanction. This sanction is simplicity it­ communicate with one another only after the sec­ self. It amounts to saying that administrative ond World War. Today it may be said that as sepa­ agencies, dealing as they do with technical ques­ rate groups they are of the past; and that is why tions, must be manned by experts. And experts, as this Iseems the right moment to sketch their forma­ everyone knows, can not perform their duties effi­ tive phases. ciently if they are hampered by inexpert Federal 'Gone are the days when the few outmoded lib­ judges exercising their function of judicial review. erals walked their paths lonely, ridiculed and with­ Administrative boards, therefore, ought not to be out response from the young. Today, on the con­ restricted by the courts but should be the arbiters trary, theirs is a staggering responsibility: the of their own authority. This is what in practice new generation demands from them the answers they become-agencies clothed with extensive and liberalism has to offer to the great problems of our arbitrary power, bending the language of the law times. to their own purposes, denying equality before the To erect a coherent edifice of such neo-liberal law, and disregarding the intent of Congress. Col­ thought, and to work out its practical application lectively they have done more to destroy individual to the problems of different countries, the intellec­ liberties and to undermine the essential character tual vitality of a larger group is needed. There still of our institutions than any other force of modern exist in many countries serious obstacles to the times. Yet the principles they observe pervade the circulation of available literature, and the lack of Federal government from the chief executive down, translations of some of the most essential books as Mr. Truman's definition of the powers of the still obstructs the flow ofneo-liberal ideas. But at President in the steel seizure case so forcibly dis­ least personal contact among the proponents of closed. neo-liberalism has been established. Switzerland Luckily public opinion still has some influence has twice been host to the loosely integrated group, on what officials in W,ashington do. In the past which gathered there for common study of its prob­ months the Wage Stabilization Board, troubled by lems. Another meeting took place in 1950 in Hol­ the public disfavor it has aroused through its steel land, and last year a fourth rallied in France. decision, dropped like hot potatoes two issues which Thus the period of drought discussed in this it had earlier shown every sign of deciding and sketch seems to have come to an end. Thirty years deciding incorrectly. These were the leading issues ago liberalism was perhaps still influential in prac­ in the oil and Borg-Warner cases, where the unions tical affairs but had almost vanished as an intel­ were demanding the substitution of central for lectual movement. Today it may have little influ­ local bargaining. This, like the union and closed ence in the world of action, but its ideas are alive shops, is one of the means national unions employ again, and once more a vital segment of the living to add to their power. Had it not been for the ef­ mind. This entitles us to speak with new confidence fects of the steel decision, the WSB would surely of a future for liberalism. have accepted the unions' position and by doing so would have overruled a long-established principle 2S ee "Inflation: Threat to Freedom," the Freeman, April 9, 1951 and "The Malady of Progressivism," July 30, 1951. in this matter. 732 THE FREEMAN

The fact is that the WSB lacked jurisdiction on Snodgrass had merely to follow established prece­ these issues. They clearly belonged before the Na­ dent, which clearly indicated that the way to make tional Labor Relations Board. But the unions, an­ a product more available to larger numbers of peo­ ticipating an unfavorable ruling from the NLRB, ple was to decrease its production. A crop curtail­ shopped around among available agencies and ment program was the inevitable answer. picked the WSB to do their bidding. A recent de­ The magnificent manner in which the AgrIcul­ cision by the NLRB shows how prescient the unions tural Police, under NCA direction, enforced the are. On June 20 the NLRB, by majority vote, cucumber curtailment program even to the im­ turned down a demand by the AFL bakers union prisonment of recalcitrant farmers in certain sec­ that the Continental Baking Company be required tions, stood as an example to the whole nation. And to make a single contract with the union covering yet Tomato Administrator McCall, by playing upon the company's 83 bakeries in 65 cities. The board public sympathy for these lawbreakers, undertook refused, in other words, to convert long-standing to poison the minds of the public against Snod­ local into national bargaining. grass, and even went so far as to charge that It would be comforting to believe that adminis­ bribery by cucumber-minded farmers was rampant strative boards can be counted on to use their among the NCA sub-administrators. powers wisely. But long experience with them These charges were refuted by Snodgrass, and shows that only comprehensive judicial review and, the tables were turned when he uncovered a secret better still, a reduction in the number of such understanding between McCall's chief investigator agencies will effectively protect the public interest. and the National Ketchup Institute. Nevertheless Snodgrass resolved to broaden and strengthen his administration, in order to leave no loophole open to his antagonists. Toward that end he presented A Picklish Situation his all-inclusive plan of cucumber crop manage­ By DON KNOWLTON ment, which, had it not been for unforeseen com­ plications, might have remained a model for gen­ erations to come. This plan, in essence, was as Adelbert Snodgrass, Jr., former National Cucum­ follows: ber Administrator, has been committed to an asy­ 1. In order to assure the availability of pickles to lum for the incurably deranged. His breakdown the underprivileged, the price of cucumbers must be followed, and obviously resulted from, the vicious set, by law, at minimum levels. campaign of vilification launched against the NCA 2. Since this price would and should be below the by conscienceless political opponents and amplified cost of production, the farmers who raised cucum­ bers should be granted a subsidy from the Federal by the kept jackals of the capitalist press. Justice Government sufficient to guarantee them a profit. demands that the name of Snodgrass be rescued 3. In order to assure broad cooperation with the from the vituperation which has been heaped upon crop curtailment program, all farmers who did not it, and that the true record of his administration raise cucumbers should be granted a compensatory bonus by the Federal Government. be laid before the people. 4. Prohibitive import duties were imposed upon cu­ The charge made by National Tomato Adminis­ cumbers as a protection to domestic growers. trator McCall, that Snodgrass at the outset of his Never was a, plan more nobly conceived. And yet administration sought to increase the quota allotted it failed. There was no possible way by which Snod­ him by the National Vegetable Survey in an en­ grass might have foreseen that in the very year in deavor to advance the status.of cucumbers at the which his .plan went into effect a severe lack of expense of tomatoes in the field of salad consump­ rainfall, plus a visitation of an insect pest especially tion, is utterly unsubstantiated by the facts. The inimical to cucumbers, would combine to cut the increase obtained by Snodgrass was confined en­ per-acre yield of cucumbers to one-fifth of theNVS tirely to the pickle field. five-year average. The NVS had disclosed that not only in many of Naturally, with the shortage, black market trends the congested industrial areas of the country, but developed. In fact, local OPS offices found cucum­ also in some of the rural districts, the per capita pers one of their most trying problem~. In some consumption of cucumber pickles was inexcusably sections price-enforcement efforts actually led to low. Whole neighborhoods were discovered in which local riots. And while Snodgrass was devoting a hundreds, or even thousands, of children had never major share of his attention to this situation, known what it was to eat a pickle. The primary trouble broke out on the farms. In many of the purpose of the National Cucumber Administration, cucumber-producing sections of the country cu­ therefore, was early defined as "the providing of cumber clubs were organized. These clubs protested more pickles to the underprivileged." It was this vehemently because, due to the skimpy crops, the humanitarian necessity which led to the increasing farmers who had raised cucumbers received less of the original cucumber quota. money for raising cucumbers than the farmers who Once this objective was defined, the means did not raise cucumbers received for not raising whereby it was to be accomplished were plain. cucumbers. JULY28,1952733

The situation was met temporarily by the re­ penditures of various national administrations. sourcefulness of the NCA administrator, who For some strange reason the Treasury saw fit to promptly organized militant groups among the publish, with respect to the N'ationalCueumber farmers who did not raise cucumbers. Among the Administration, the administrative cost per pickle delegations which hastened to Washington in this consumed. In his well-known spirit of vindictive­ connection, the non-cucumber-raising groups showed ness, Tomato Administrator McCall seized upon a substantial majority over the cucumber-raising this figure and demanded an investigation of the groups, and the emergency was tided over. NCA. McCall succeeded far better than he wished; But new complications arose. While Tomato Ad­ for the result was a national hue and cry for the ministrator McCall has emphatically denied any investigation of all Federal administrations, in­ responsibility for instigating the program of in­ cluding McCall's; and the Senate Committee known creased cucumber production in South America, in as the "Alphabet Committee" came into being. The the mountains of Mexico, and even in certain prov­ NCA headed the list of agencies to be investigated. inces of Africa, the fact remains that such a pro­ The culmination came at a press conference gram was stimulated and cucumber bootlegging which Snodgrass held just a week before he was shortly became one of the major problems of the scheduled to appear before the Alphabet Commit­ country. Many were the ingenious devices adopted tee. The reporters noticed that there was a vague by shippers endeavoring to slip undercover cargoes look in his eye. He was strangely silent. Even so, of cucumbers into this country. There were cucum­ no one had had any conception of his actual mental bers run by sm~ll boats up countless estuaries condition until the reporter from the New York along the Atlantic Coast. Times asked him: "Mr. Snodgrass, what is your Eighteen foreign powers presented a joint peti­ candid opinion as to the state of the nation?" tion threatening tariff retaliations unless this "Nuts !" said Snodgrass. The next day he was country relaxed cucumber tariff policies. As much committed to the asylum. as Snodgrass wished the country to maintain a Snodgrass still lives. That is the pity of it. To firm stand, it did not then appear expedient to those who die, at least flowers are brought. I ask force the issue to the point of an international for Snodgrass only the recognition which, upon his crisis. He reluctantly consented to permit the mat­ record, he deserves. ter to be referred to the Inter-Nation Cultural Authority, and turned to face the domestic foes who were now in concert closing in upon him. Prophecy For the drought and the pests had done their work. The small greeds' of special groups stood When chicken-hawks scream forth naked and unashamed. Without the slightest And hens don't cower, compunction, the public, following in its fickle way That will be the year the oratory of opportunism and the platitudes of The day and the hour. political chicanery, pilloried the very man whom a few months before they had lauded to the ultimate. When the fangs of snakes The cucumber growers, now organized on a na­ Are milked for honey, tional scale, raised a cry of insufficient govern­ When Greed has no stomach mental subsidies. The non-cucumber growers, even And misers shun money; more thoroughly organized, demanded larger bo­ When virus brings balm nuses. The League of Housewives and Restaurant To the.bustling blood, Owners demanded an explanation of the causes of When the worm scorns man the cucumber shortage. The Association for Peace And vomits on mud; at Any Price objected to the increased appropria­ When love has no sorrow tion which the Coast Guard stated would be needed And fools are not praised, to protect the country against illegal entry of cu­ When the wage-scale of Sin cumbers. The armed forces launched an investiga­ Is finally raised; tion, as did also the United Nations. The National When atoms whirl slow Pickle Institute, with its powerful lobby and its To the shepherd's flute, remarkable propaganda facilities, took advantage When rockets won't fly , of this situation to warp the view of the public. And cannon won't shoot And as if th~se things were not enough-the CFHO (Committee for Farm Hands Organization) chose When chicken-hawks scream this moment to demand a wage increase, and And hens don't cower, threatened to tie up the nation's entire facilities When tyrants grow weary for not raising cucumbers, if the raise was not at Of their power- once forthcoming. That will be the year It was at this point that the United States The day and the hour. Treasury brought forth its report comparing ex- ~DWARD MURRAY CASE Undermining the Republic

A former governor of Colorado warns that our By JOHN c. VIVIAN republiclan form Jol government is endangered by those UJho prefer the tyranny of democracy.

Calvin Coolidge once questioned whether democ­ m·ent. Not only did the Founding Fathers build a racy was a failure. This was unlike the late Presi­ republican form of government for the nation, but dent, who had always been careful to refer to the they also wrote into the Constitution a guarantee United States rightly as a republic. He was taken of that form to the several states. The parts make to task by a friend, to whom he replied: up the whole on exactly the same pattern. George Washington referred to our "republican Your letter is entirely correct. I think you will model of government." John Adams approved it as search my statements in vain for any reference to the United States as a democracy. I always, refer to "a representative government as distinguished it as a republic. I used the word the other day be­ from the self rule of a democracy." Thomas J effer­ cause I was not referring especially to our govern­ son pleaded that the nation "with courage and con­ ment but to the general movement towards democ­ fidence, pursue our own F'ederal and republican racy. Of course, the word is used very loosely now. principles-our attachment to union .and repre­ No word in the English language has been em- sentative government." Even Andrew Jackson of ployed more carelessly than "democracy." The fact the Jeffersonian democracy said that the "eyes of is, we do not have a democracy in America. We all nations are fixed upon our Republic." never have had. Ours is a republic, as set forth by Abraham Lincoln always referred to the Ameri­ the Constitution of the United States. The two can government as a republic. IGrover Cleveland forms of government are not compatible. In a said the Constitution was "launched by the founders democracy, the people govern themselves directly of the Republic." Benjamin Harrison spoke of and without representatives. In a republic they are "equipping the young Republic for the defense of governed by elected representatives, as we in independence," and William Mc!Kinley called upon America have been ever since 1776. There are those the American people to do "our full duty as citizens who contend that ours is a "representative democ­ of the great Republic." Theodore Roosevelt men­ racy," which is the same as 'saying it is a republic. tioned the "tasks set before our fathers who Down to the time of Woodrow Wilson the United founded the Republic ... which made great men States was seldom described as anything but a re­ who preserved the Republic in the days of Lincoln." public. The word "democracy" occurs rarely in Alexander Hamilton, the foremost advocate of a state papers. Nearly always the country is "the strong centralized government, is credited with Republic." Thomas Jefferson was the founder of having told the Constitutional Convention that it the Democratic Party; but in his first inaugural was for them to decide forever the fate of repub­ address, though he refers several times to "the lican government. He held that if all power is given Republic," or the republican form of government, to the many, they will oppress the few; give the he does not once use the word "democracy" or any same authority to the few, and they will oppress derivative of it. the many. Each, he maintained, op.ght to be able to Here is an example of a modern trend. Senator defend itself against the other. Hence the system Herbert Lehman, in his first inaugural message as of checks and balances in the Constitution. Governor of N,ew York State in 1933, did not once Our government's division of powers. into legis­ use the word "democracy." In his message of 1935 lative, executive and judicial recognizes that if the he used it twice. In his message of 1939 he used same man, or men, make the laws, interpret them "democracy" or a derivative thereof 25. times; and and execute them, despotism results. in his annual message to the Legislature, January It is difficult to visualize a government under a 3, 1940, he used it no less than 33 times. pure democracy. Today the attempt to exercisegov­ It is interesting to note that the word "democ­ ernmental fun~tions under such a system would be racy" does not appear in the Declaration of Inde­ unwieldy and entirely impractical. It would be im­ pendence or the Constitution of the United States. possible for the people to govern themselves with­ The founders of our nation deliberately formed. a out the aid of representatives in a country of 140 republic and zealously referred to it as such. It ,was million. Any attempt to do so would result in chaos described by the French patriot Lamartine and the and the collapse of all governmental functions. British statesman Pitt as a "model republic": that Under the republican form of government, we is to say, a pattern or standard form of govern- gave to our people during their first century as a JULY 28,1952 735 nation religious freedom, civil liberty, freedom of laws, more and more taxes to be spent by more and speech and of the press, popular education, security more people in a government growing more and of individual rights, initiative and enterprise. We more complex. If this trend persists, we are going developed statesmen who adhered to the standards to have less individual initiative, incentive and en-­ set up by the new Republic; we gave asylum to terprise such as have made this Republic great, foreigners; we made material progress in our econ­ prosperous and contented. If such a movement con­ omy, and achieved a leading place among the na­ tinues, states rights will be more and more sub­ tions of the world. We did this by holding to the merged and we shall be placing more and more form of government established by our forebears. power in the hands of the Federal Government, ,Ours is the only simon-pure republic in the world thus straying farther and farther away from the today in which the absolute sovereignty is vested republican form of government. in the people. Each citizen is an integral part of Our Republic is undergoing basic and funda­ the government: it is a grave error to think of the mental changes. Not all of them are by ordinary government as something apart from' ourselves. processes. Many of them are inspired insidiously. Soon after the adoption of the Constitution, The Voters Are Responsible George Washington predicted that it would last "as long as there shall remain any virtue in the body The question arises, "Is our government chang­ of the people." He also ventured the opinion that ing?" Many people are inclined to confuse the the destruction of the Constitution would result powers and authority of the government and to from "listlessness in the preservation of the natural give it more leeway than it actually possesses. The and inalienable rights of mankind." In his Fare­ government produces nothing. Its grants-in-aid to well Address he conjectured that our republican the states, its relief, in fact, every cent it spends, form of government would not be overthrown from comes from the people in taxes. So when we re­ without, but undermined from within. That is ex­ ceive government funds for any project, we are re­ actly what is happening today. ceiving our own money with administrative broker­ At first the gradual crumbling of the Republic ages and handling costs deducted. was hardly noticeable, but as we view the funda­ Government can not payout any more than it mental changes in the Constitution which can not collects, except, of course, under the political phi­ escape any thoughtful citizen, we must conclude losophy which has been rampant in Washington that the form of government is changing. This is since 1932 and which holds that there is nothing difficult to admit, and yet the representative system to worry about in deficit spending because "we owe has long since been replaced in the Federal set-up it to ourselves." This is a catch phrase which has by Executive appointments which are not repre­ no factual meaning. It is economically unsound. If sentative of the people because \the people have no you don't believe it, just ask Uncle Sam to pay you control over them through the ballot-box and can the portion owed to you. Would you get it? not inffuence them. Weare being governed to a All of this places a tremendous responsibility large extent by a bureaucratic system over which upon an electorate which is in large part apathetic. neither the Congress nor the people has any control. It is a sad commentary that out of 94 million The present situation, of course, is the result of eligible voters of the nation in 1948, only a few one assault after another upon the fundamentals of more than 49 million went to the polls and cast the republican system. The irony is that the av­ their ballots for the men and women they desired erage citizen is allowing this to take place under to represent them in public office. Some 683,000 his nose without making any effort to stop it. of these failed to vote for President. Do the American people really want a central How long would a private corporation last if its government of unlimited powers? Whether the stockholders failed to vote at annual meetings? If Union under the republican form could survive such indifference should persist, and the stock­ under such a government is a grave question. It holders in the biggest business in the world, the probably will not do so, if the great mass of the Government of' the United States, should continue people do not take more interest in their govern­ to fail in their duty to insure its existence, any­ ment. As long as strong minorities are allowed to thing could happen. If, through our lack of interest, function in an effort to undermine our national this Republic is replaced by a totalitarian form of system, just so long shall we continue to watch a government, we shall have only ourselves to blame. trend toward totalitarianism. It is unfortunate that we do not have more When the sessions of the Constitutional Conven­ schools of practical government where ordinary tion in Philadelphia in 1789 had ,ended, Benjamin politics may be taught-the modus operandi of our Franklin,a participant in the deliberations, was towns, cities, counties, states and nation. We train asked if we had a republic or a monarchy. The men for all sciences except the science of govern­ learned Franklin is said to have replied: "A re­ ment, which would seem to be the most important. public, if you can keep it." There is a feeling abroad that, in oider to add Julia Ward Howe did not write "The Battle to our happiness, we must have laws and more Hymn of the Democracy." Arts and Entertainments

By WILLlAM S. SCHLAMM

son's reportorial record clean as to protect Thur­ The Secret Lives of ber, the nation's finest madman, against ordinary idiocy. For nothing can ruin a subtle sense of hu­ James Thurber mor so fast as an attack of common silliness, and the country just can not afford to take chances Because James Thurber is a, true humorist, he with a scarce natiQnal asset. If the Junior Senator should be taken very seriously. Of all national re­ from Wisconsin can make the Senior Humorist sources humor is in shortest supply,.and no con­ from Ohio sprain his funny-bone on no provoca­ servation problem worries me more. The du Ponts tion at all, the time has come to examine James or somebody else can always be relied on to de­ Thurber's intellectual condition. velop, in a real crisis, a satisfactory substitute for molybdenum, but not even James Thurber can The case history of James Thurber has been partly imagine what we would do without James Thurber. written by the leading authority on that difficult The thought of a Thurberless America is enough subject, namely: Mr. Thurber. His recently pub­ to empty anybody's heart, and the other day I had lished "The Thurber Album" (Simon and Schuster, a frightening premonition of just such a calamity. $3.50), one of the few pure joys of the literary The occasion, I hasten to add, had a truly Thur­ year, explains much of the undiluted happiness the beresque touch: James Thurber was confiding his grouchy Mr. Thurber has managed, for so many most serious political ideas to Mr. Earl Wilson, the years now, to spread among us. He subtitles the N ew York Post's expert on low necklines - an book "A New Collection of Pieces About People," event so hugely improper, and so far beyond the but these loose pieces about dead Ohioans lovingly reach of normal inventiveness, that only Thurber remembered fit together and finally form the por­ could have conjured it up. trait of one who is alive and hardly mentioned at "Who can write where everybody's scared?" all- James Thurber of Columbus, Ohio. asked Thurber, who is scared but can write, of I have always loved James Thurber, as most Wilson, who might be scared too, but can not. everybody else does, and now I know why. Nine "The end of American comedy is in sight, and the years ago (and I bring this up mainly to present theater's gone to hell, and you can thank a bunch my credentials for what is going to be a spanking of guys in Congress." Mr. Brooks Atkinson, in - an effort which will undubitably hurt me ml:lch short, has made an important convert to his half­ more than it will hurt Mr. Thurber), I wrote in witticism that Senator Joe McCarthy must be the New York Times Book Review of N'ovember 21­ blamed for the obscene debacle of the Broadway 1943: stage. (For a detailed discussion of Mr. Atkinson's What makes Mr. Thurber a great humorist is that assault on truth, see my coroner's report in the he isn't kidding. You may learn from him practically Freeman of December 31, 1951.) "Blatherskiting" everything, except why on earth one should go on Congressmen, Mr. Thurber wants you to know living - but after half an hour with James Thuraer through the courtesy of what is easily the most you are much too exhausted to ask such a profound question. Thurber, whose life work seems to be to vulgar column this side of honest pornography, are dig up evidence against the whole proposition, doesn't "killing American comedy and culture." give you a chance to evaluate his material. Either This exclusive interview with James Thurber you don't get what he is talking (drawing) about, was, to my mind, Mr. Wilson's greatest literary or you have laughed so much that you've forgotten scoop since he published the verified measurements it. of Dagmar's bust. ("Marilyn Monroe doesn't wear No wonder that the late Robert van Gelder, then anything under her clothes," read, somewhat re­ the editor of the Times Book Review, gave my dundantly, another recent scoop of Mr. Thurber's little essay the title: "A Misanthropic Quixote, chosen Boswell. "Nothing but Marilyn.") But Versus the Human Race." Now that I have read though he normally has a culture-concerned man's "The Thurber Album," I think we were wrong. trained eye for falsies, Wilson did not notice the J ames Thurber loves the proposition of living and conspicuously misleading features in the Thurber he loves people -:-living, that is, in Columbus, sketch of America's cultural anatomy. I should like Ohio, and people who died a long time ago, prefer­ to set matters straight-not so much to keep Wil- ably thereabouts. His savage dissent and his seem- JULY 28, 1952 737 ingly anarchistic objection to things as they are is cisely at this point that the contemporary artist all rooted in the nostalgia of an incorrigible con­ tr1aps himself in an ironical misunderstanding: servative. (Humor, come to think of it, has always his posture is still that of defiance all right; but been an art of and for conservatives: professional he is swimming with the current. All dressed up reformers may have talent for satire, but they can for battle, he has none to fight. And so his talents not laugh.) wither. The truth that unmistakably emerges from the More than anything else, it seems to me, this "Album" is that the secret lives of James Thurber tragicomedy of errors explains the intellectual and center on midwestern Main Streets. He cherishes artistic sterility of our age. Our intellectuals and (when no one looks) the wholesome American vir- our artists are still equipped with yesterday's im­ tues New Yorker sophisticates are supposed to de­ ages of protest - and have not noticed yet that ride -,- the cussedness of provincial individualists, they are rooting for those in power. They still use the grin of commoners who are physically incapable yesterday's vocabulary of rebellion, but throw it of cynicism, the sheepish generosity of even pro­ at today's underdog. This contortion inevitably fessed misers, the shrewd madness of small-town frustrates the intellect and suffocates art. characters, the Mid-West's impatience with snobs. What I am driving at may well be, at least cul­ And the anger that feeds Thurber's humor is pro­ turally, the crucial phenomenon of our era: the duced by his homesickness for an America which advocates of the ruling order are costumed as dis­ contracts in space and recedes in time. senters; the heralds of conformity speak the jar­ There are in "The Thurber Album" flashes of gon of rebels. For who, in demonstrable truth, are recognition which illuminate the sources of Thur­ the downtrodden and persecuted of this day? Who berism more than anything he has written before if not those few who oppose the overpowering trend - too much, perhaps, to please that other, the toward regimentation and statism; the tattered metropolitan Mr. Thurber who communes with battalion of foolhardy men who denounce the dei­ Earl Wilson. For instance, when he dedicates a fication of the compact majority; the brave Quixotes few superb pages to an epitaph· for Bob Ryder, the who defy the impudence of fashion? And who are lovable editor and paragrapher of the Ohio State the snobs, the conformists, the Babbitts of our Journal, Thurber achieves this inspired insight times? Who if not the propagandists of an empty into the nature of contemporary liberalism: "social consciousness," the barkers of "progress," the slick copywriters of the modish consensus that It seems to me, in conclusion, that Robert O. Ryder may have sent that truly great paragraph ricochet­ one Joe McCarthy is the apocalyptic hound of hell? ing down the echoing. corridors of time when he Yes, it suits me fine to accept Mr. Thurber's wrote: "A hardened reformer never seems able to challenge and consider McCarthy as the acid test. make up his mind which is the most beautiful word If the mighty and rich, the entrenched and the con­ in the language, 'compulsory' or 'forbidden.'" formists, the snobs and what I like to call the cer­ Who could, or would want to, retouch this perfect tified gentlemen have ever agreed on a common X-ray picture of the committed McLiberals? Also, enemy, and made asses of themselves, they have who can explain why the James Thurber of the done so in the case of McCarthy. Here is an ambi­ "Album" should want his recent pictures taken, tious young man from Wisconsin who has yet to demonstratively, in the company of these very learn about the accepted manners of public debate. same liberals? Well, I do not know that I can. But He has occasionally misjudged the motives of men, I would like to try. but not worse than two whole generations of lib­ erals have misjudged men and motives. He has In addition to the divine spark, or whatever ac­ called Owen Lattimore the top Soviet agent in this counts in your personal credo for the mystery of country and he has produced no conclusive evidence creativeness, art is ignited by a talented man's - yet. Two whole generations of American liberals friction with his environment. It does not always have called honorable men "merchants of death" have to be the studied protest of the rebel. In fact, and Stalin a protagonist of peace and human lib­ it seldom is: conscious zeal blunts the artist's tools. eration. For either judgment they surely had far But unless he is mobilized by some kind of conflict less evidence than McCarthy had for his. with his world-a conflict between sensibility and But now consider what happens. On the one side, smugness more than anything else - the artist there are the opinion-makers, the professional atrophies. This, it seems to me, is the only kernel leaders of mankind, the ordained prime-movers of of truth in the balderdash of Social Determinism progress, the teachers and artists and critics - and which otherwise reduces esthetics to professorial they have all been proved wrong in a prolonged inanities. misjudgment that may involve the death of every­ So the artist (certainly in our modern world thing they were trained to uphold. On the other from which reverence and humility have vanished) side, there is a pretty lonely, not at all subtle and habitually assumes the posture of opposition. He entirely self-made Midwestern politician - and he needs to think that he is defying the entrenched may be proved wrong in judgments that involve inertia, the arrogant powers-that-be. And it is pre- the reputations of some members of the club. But 738 THE FREEMAN consider, indeed, what happens! The atrocious, murderous misjudgments of the certified gentlemen This Is What They Said are deemed not merely forgivable, but downright honorable. Yet the entire pack of liberal commenta­ In eastern Europe, White Russia, and the Ukraine, tors, columnists, editors, writers, critics and, yes, what remains of friendly feeling for America is humorists jumps at the throat of a single politician due primarily to the operations of UNRRA, in who, though anything but choosy in his use of which American interests were soft-pedaled while weapons, has less fire power than anyone of his American goods were loud-pedaled. syndicated opponents. OWEN LATTIMORE, "The Situation in Asia," 1949 Bob Ryder, I dare say, would have sided with McCarthy - not because he would have approved In the campaign for seats in Congress that fol­ of a cavalier approach to evidence, but because he lowed that autumn [1946] the Republicans pressed detested the snobbish pack even more. Most people as a chief issue the existence of "subversives" in I had the intense pleasure of meeting in "The the Government. They achieved majorities in both Th_urber Album" would have sided with McCarthy House and Senate. - not because they believed in research by shot­ gun, but because they loathed compact majorities FRANCIS BIDDLE, "The Fear of Freedom," 1951 the hypocrites of fashion, the dandies of conformity: In short, the serious quandary of James Thurber A new society, emerging from the shell of the old, is that he acts like a man of fashion, Le., out of his creates a framework within which a great thinker natural style - his style as a freeman from Co­ or artist is enabled to do his work; and that work, lumbus, Ohio, and his style as a true artist. The in turn, serves to smash finally the shell of the old man who is homesick for such vanishing verities society, and to complete and make firmer the out­ as honor and guts and cockeyed friendliness ought lines of the new. Thus it has been with Machia- . to understand that the last refuge for these virtues velli's "Prince," with Adam Smith's "The Wealth is among those foolhardy men who throw them­ of Nations," and with Karl Marx's "Capital." selves against the tide of collectivism. And the MAX LERNER, introduction to Modern Li­ artist ought to understand that art is bleeding to brary edition of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," 1937 death, not because an accidental Senator is taking potshots, but because the artists have been bleed­ The Soviet worker may actively participate in the ing themselves. total life of the factory. He shares directly both They have been doing it since that fatal moment its responsibilities and its benefits. Although it is when the pendulum of herd instincts swung far to not true to say that the factory belongs to him, he the collectivist left. They hooked a ride on that belongs to the factory, and his sense of belonging pendulum, and thereby deserted the one fixed po­ gives him status. It is this status which explains sition from which art can grow - the position of both the hardships to which he is subjected and individuals whose taste and conscience defy the the protection which he is accorded. modish mob. That during that ride to power they THE ATLANTIC, July 1952, editorial report kept shou"ting the slogans of rebellion made things on the Soviet worker. only worse. The posture of protest in a position of conformity is a fraud that must end in sterility. Another Nowa Huta JPolandJ patriot who has And if Mr. Thurber wants to know what in made a name for himself is Peter Osanski. He particular, has been "killing American comedy he J' came to the construction site as an unskilled could get a good lead from Bob Ryder's admirable worker but soon organized a bricklaying brigade paragraph on the hardened reformer. Here is the which broke all records. He was made an instruc­ native, the tremendous, perhaps the only material tor in Stakhanovite methods.... One of the girls for an American comedy in the great tradition of he taught soon took his name-this was the first Aristophanes and Moliere, comedy that pricks pre­ marriage of Nowa Huta. Some felt that the wed­ t~nsions and sham: the liberal who craves compul­ lock of the young couple should be solemnized by SIon and wants everything he disagrees with to be th~ construction chief, Zralek, just as a ship's cap­ forbidden. But who will write that comedy if the taIn performs marriage ceremonies at sea. man from Columbus, Ohio, who could, has gone and joined the pack? NEW TIMES, Moscow, October 10, 1951 Please, Mr. Thurber, come home - to Bob Ryder to Huck Finn, to Columbus, Ohio! ' The Freeman invites contributions to this column and will pay $2 for each quotation published. If an item is 'sent in by m?re than. one person, the one from whom it is first received • WIll ~e paId. To fac~lit~te verification, the sender should give the tItle of the penodlcal or book from which the item is "Liberal" is an alias behind which all sorts of taken, wi~h !he exact date if the source is a, periodical and people hide to carryon their own particular the p~bhcatIon year and page number if it is a book. QuotatIons should be brief. They can not be returned or schemes ranging all the way from nefarious to just acknowledged. THE EDITORS plain silly. MARGARET RAMBAUT A Reviewer's Notebook

Bv JO'HN CHAMBE'RLAIN

As I write there is a vast tumult in Chicago, where the spokesman for free enterprise in general and a host of New Dealish cuckoos are vying with the the Commonwealth and Southern utility empire in more legitimate birds for control of the orthodox particular, Willkie had had the temerity to take Republican nest. The stress is heavily on the on the Tennessee Valley Authority. The pet of Menckenian side of politics, but if there is one the sainted George Norris, the TVA was merely safe generalization that can be made this July it is the most sacred of all the New Deal cows. It was that the people who will vote on candidates and seemingly tempting fate to touch the TVA, yet platforms next autumn are not in a harlequin 'Villkie had a resurgent business community behind mood. Indeed, it is entirely possible that voters him, and he might have won in November if he may be ready to ponder such serious campaign had continued to take his true line, which was that literature as James L. Wick's "How NOT to Run of bold opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's Statist for President: A Handbook for Republicans" (New philosophy. York: Vantage Press, $1) and Harley L. Lutz's "A Platform for the American Way" (Appleton-Cen­ Wha' hoppen? As everybody ought to know by tury-Crofts, $2). now, the symbol of anti-Rooseveltism went out to Elwood, Indiana, to make a footling acceptance The Wick book is presented as an elongated pam­ speech filled with "me-too" psychology. Instead phlet, but for all its unpretentious cover it con­ of appealing to the natural leaders of the Repub­ tains the soundest analysis of the Republican de­ lican Party, the men who might have persuaded feats of 1940, 1944 and 1948 that has been printed the 'weak and the indecisive in November, Willkie to date. Taking the bull by the corns (to quote figuratively doffed his cap to "Champ" Roosevelt Jimmy Durante) on the very first page, Mr. Wick on levery possible occasion. Moreover, he learned refutes the idea that there is a great bloc of notjhing from his defeat, for in his campaign for strong-minded "independent voters" who charac­ a rlenomination in 1944 he persisted in courting teristically wait until November before making the! approval of New York's Park Avenue intellec­ their decision about the candidates. According to tuals. I wrote an article for Life Magazine in March Mr. Wick's researches, 80 or 90 per cent of all of 1944 arguing that Willkie needed the votes of persons of above-average political intelligence some Republican regulars in the primaries, not know which party will get their vote before the the votes of Dorothy Thompson and Samuel Presidential candidates have been nominated. The Grafton (who were Democrats anyway), but it ones who remain uncommitted until late in the had no effect on Mr. Willkie, who was above listen­ campaign tend to be of two types. Either they ing to advice from presumed whippersnappers. belong to the group of passive followers who are weak and indecisive by Simply because Willkie nature or they are people Lest You Forget persisted in stupidity be­ who are subjected to ter­ yond the call of duty, rible inner conflicts. In SOME OLDER BOOKS FOR LIBERTARIANS Dewey won the Repub­ either case, it takes un­ The Key to Peace, by Clarence Manion lican nomination in 1944. equivocal leadership, not (Heritage Foundation) He did this by sticking to "me-too" or "let's-have­ the "pros," letting Willkie The God of the Machine, by Isabel Pater­ unity" tactics, to catch have the amateurs. Then son (Putnam) the last-minute voter. he, too, threw away the The Discovery of Freedom, by Rose Wilder election by turning his at­ Both Willkie (in 1940) Lane (John Day) tention to the non-existent and Dewey (in 1944 and Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Haz­ "independent vote." And 1948) misread the nature litt (Harper) he played the same fatal of the electorate. Willkie record all over again in went into the Republican Capitalism the Creator, by Carl Snyder 1948. Truman, a "pro" in Convention of 1940 as a (Macmillan) politics if there ever was fighting symbol of opposi~ The Road to Serfdom, by F. A. Hayek (Uni­ one, made some fighting tion to the New Deal. As versity of Chicago Press) 0l paalu~.I~n.8 saq;:>aads 740 THE FREEMAN catch the weak and indecisive in the last-minute rush, and the Democrats were in for four more A Living Creed years when, by all the odds, they should have lost. A Creed for Free Enterprise, by Clarence B. Ran­ The whole free world was moving to the "right" dall. Boston: Atlantic Monthly-Little, Brown. in 1948, and America would have moved in that $2.75 direction too if Dewey had taken a firm anti­ Statist line. Mr. Randall's Creed for Free Enterprise is a state­ ment of an intelligent, public-spirited belief in No matter who is the Republican nominee this freedom by one of its most articulate proponents. time, he must take his stand on a traditional form Mr. Randall is no preacher who talks with tongue of Americanism if he is to win. Harley L. Lutz, in cheek; his is a living creed - a Sunday througb the well-known Princeton economist, has pre­ Saturday creed. sented a first-rate Americanist platform for any Mr. Randall's creed is progressive, dynamic and Republican candidate in his "A Platform for the above all a creed that is rooted in social responsi­ American Way." Dr. Lutz begins soundly by pro­ bility. The most telling argument advanced by the claiming the Right to Own as the basic human Socialists against free enterprise is its purported right. This, as Isabel Paterson says, is a matter of disregard for the common good. Our free enter­ mechanics: if a person lacks the right to own land, prise system is always painted in lurid colors of he must .appeal to the State for permission to an excessively selfish social irresponsibility com­ occupy the ground he stands on; and if he lacks monly associated with unrestricted or laissez-faire the right to own tools he must turn to a political capitalism. Mr. Randall, in what to me was the agent for the very things that are needed to bring most timely chapter in his book, "The Business­ food to his mouth. The right to free speech is de­ man and the Community," disposes of this bit of pendent on the right to own paper, printing presses socialist propaganda. He does some soul searching and such; the right to worship is dependent on the of himself and his fellow-businessmeI}. regarding right to own a church in community with other the businessman's timidity in recapturing his right­ like-minded people. ful leadership in community affairs. Mr. Randall concludes that, to survive, free business must be Dr. Lutz's book goes into technicalities about an exemplary citizen, winning its place in the com­ taxation, social security and other "difficult" sub­ munity by an intelligent participation in the solu­ jects. But it is a clearly written document, and tion of community problems, some of which, he the main points are made in sharp little para­ admits, are due to the presence of industry. In his graphs set in small type throughout the book. A chapter on "The Businessman and the Govern­ confirmed anti-Statist, Dr. Lutz wants no palter­ ment" Mr. Randall continues in the same vein, ing: he is for getting the Federal government out saying in effect to his fellow-businessmen: "Less of the fields of lending, giving, and competing aimless and sulky criticism and more active par­ with private industry and banking. Neither the ticipation in government." Republican nor the Democratic platform will tally to any marked degree with Dr. Lutz's own plat­ Being a schoolman in a private university, I form, for politicians are a temporizing breed even naturally was delighted with Mr. Randall's chapter at best. But you can judge the comparative vir­ on "The Businessman and the Universities." His tues of the platforms that are written at Chicago proposal that private business and private univer­ by putting them alongside Dr. Lutz's book and sities are so connected that the one can not exist seeing which one approaches it as a limit. without the other will cause much comment. Free enterprise and academic freedom are made from Ben Hecht once wrote a story about stone-eating the same fabric, freedom. Mr. Randall analyzes termites. A crazy notion, but not too crazy, for correctly and. clearly the financial difficulties the fact of the matter is that we all eat stuff that threatening the survival of private educational in­ originated in stone, as Jacquetta Hawkes shows stitutions and the consequent obligation of free in "A Land" (Random, $3.75). In the beginning business to aid private education. He pleads for a everything was stone; humus and chlorophyll are sorely needed understanding between university merely added starters. professors and businessmen. Mr. Randall asks for understanding also in the Miss Hawkes is paleontologist, archeologist and case of young men in his most human chapter poet. "A Land" is the story of the rocks of Britain titled "Young Men." This chapter treats of the and what these rocks, crumbled into soil or quar­ problems of the selection and training of young ried and shaped into building materials, have men for responsibility in industry. This is "must" done to form the culture, even the bone and reading for graduating seniors and also for all marrow, of the British people. A book of scientific those in industry who select and train college precision, yet it has much of the excitement of graduates for the difficult job of industrial leader­ .TackLondon's "Before Adam." ship. The chapter is rich with an insight into hu- JULY 28, 1952 741

Inan nature which only experience and a love of for the international circulation of that book, the one's fellow-men could give. tragedy of 1914 might never have occurred. Any suspicion of sentimentality created by this But the tragedy did occur. And, moreover, it re­ chapter is quickly dispelled by Mr. Randall in his occurred in 1939, although another edition of "The chapter on "Unions Never Lose." Shining through Great Illusion" had sold a quarter of a million its pages is the author's conviction that allegiance copies the year before. Norman Angell's trumpet and loyalty of employees can be won only by a call to the world to be rational ushered in an age strong stand on principle and not by a condescend­ whose dominant trait is probably summed up in ing program of appeasement. This chapter was Lancelot Hogben's phrase: "The Retreat From written to and for working people and not for Reason." businessmen; it pays a compliment to all American Most of us have been all too familiar with that working people by implying that they respect that sad story. But we learn in this thoughtful and de­ businessman who has strong convictions regarding lightful autobiography of another irony with which his creed of free enterprise. This chapter is the fate pursued Norman Angell. His effort to stop the work of a true economic statesman. drift toward war by demonstrating its impracti­ In this day of confused thinking regarding cality was, as I said, clear as a Sahara sky. No one American free enterprise, Mr. Randall's book outside a lunatic asylum, you would think, could should be read by all Americans simply because it misread his message. And yet a vast majority of is such a clear, courageous statement of the prin­ those who have heard about him or his famous ciples and problems of American capitalism by one book-70 to 80 per cent of them, he thinks-believe who, by reason of knowledge and experience, is that he told people not to worry, war has grown so eminently qualified to write such a manifesto on expensive it won't happen again! Quite recently an freedom. There will be much comment about and American university president warned his students disagreement with parts of this boole Those who against "the attractive fallacies of Norman Angell disagree must admit Mr. R-andall is worthy of who believed there could be no more war." praise for his intelligent exposition of his convic­ As the crown of a life effort to get people to use tions. This is a book that has been long overdue their brains about politics, that would certainly get and should do much in counteracting the untruth.;, most men down. But N'orman Angell takes it in his ful and insidious propaganda of the Socialists stride. He indulges neither in swear words nor ges­ against free enterprise. EDWARD A. KELLER tures of pious resignation, but merely calls it "a strange result with some sort of moral." That quietude of spirit is characteristic of him. A Light That Still Shines He has written many wise books besides the one that made him so famous, and they are all charac­ After All: The Autobiography of Norman Angell, terized by the steadiness with which his reason il­ New York: Farrar, Straus and Young. $4.50 lumines a problem. Here is a light that will not fail, you feel, no matter what storms blow up. And There is a twofold pathos-or is it irony?-in Nor­ now in this more personal writing the same mood man Angell's life. He was possessed of a passion prevails. Norman Angell's whole life seems to have to prevent war, and an epochal perception of the been lived in a calmly thoughtful way-not without irrationality of the resort to war under modern will and passion by any means, but with mind al­ conditions. War has become bad business as well ways in the ascendant. as bad morals and politics. Nobody wins a modern Our long friendship gives the revelations in war. This Norman Angell explained in one of the "After All" a special fascination for me-the fasci­ most lucid and flawlessly logical books ever writ­ nation of learning more where you already know ten: "The ,Great Illusion." quite a little. It has not been a close personal It was a prodigiously famous book. Published friendship, but only a pleasure in occasional meet­ early in 1909, it spread through the world as though ings due to the assured possession of two common a dam had burst. Inside of eighteen months it was interests: "clear thinking and a strong love of translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, peace." I quote this phrase from a letter in which Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Po­ Sir Norman's sister once epitomized, quite exactly, lish, Finnish, Czech, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese. the qualities that give him his unique place in the Cabinet meetings were held about it. In England world. He might be described as the only peace the German Ambassador made it the subject of a evangelist with enough hardness in him for the special pronouncement. The King presented copies task of thinking. to his ministers. Norman Angell societies were Sir Norman is so slight a man, has so delicate a formed. "Norman Angelism" se.emed actually to be complexion, is so exquisitely courteous, and seems going to prevent the impending war-to head off so intrinsically a bachelor, that this hardness in this age of hate and slaughter in which we have him comes as something of a surprise. I don't know the fascinating misfortune to live. There are peo­ why being a bachelor should not ordimarily be con­ ple who still think that, given a few years more sistent with hardness. But the words slipped out of 742 THE FREEMAN me, and they express a thought that came to my cago, where he earned his living by newspaper mind often as I read his book-the blissful absence work, he made his way back to Paris. His success from it of any of the dire and distracting problems there was so rapid that in two or three years-the' of love. But for an "amorous advance" from a dates here are not quite clear-he was invited by "raddled old woman of sixty or thereabouts," who Lord Northcliffe to found, edit and manage a Paris begged him as a lad of seventeen to join her in a edition of the London Daily Mail. As Norman An­ new mystical religion connected with Madame Bla­ gell Lane-his original name-he conducted that vatsky, and a slight disagreement with a girl in a newspaper with success and distinction until 1912, sleeping compartment who wanted the porter to when he resigned to assist in the missionary work make up one berth instead of two, he has nothing that his book, "The Great Illusion," had set in to say of the snags that seem to so many to be motion. what life is really about. One other major turn in his career was his join­ Whatever his life may have been about, this ing the British Labor Party in 1920. He describes story of it is about·"the problems of society" right it as a "left turn with doubts," and thinks now that from the start. While at school in Paris where he he would have been wiser not to have made it. Per­ learned to speak French as fluently as English, he haps that is true, but he would have deprived this seems to have passed almost at one jump through book, "After All," of some of its most interesting a phase of adolescent revolutionism, and on into a and valuable chapters. For his observations and re­ mature disillusion with it all. He decided at seven­ flections on that party, on leftward politics in gen­ teen that "the happiest people are going to be eral, and on certain men eminent in British political those who make something with their hands," and life, could hardly have been so vivid and penetrat­ he decided that the problems of society, as pre­ ing had he not sat in at committee meetings and sented in the old world at least, were hopeless. "A conferences that were in every other respect a free, simple, self-sufficient life in the open" seemed waste of time. He is particularly sure-handed in better than a harrowingly conscientious attempt to painting the portrait of Ramsay MacDonald, a solve them. Against the combined pull of family, character who has always rather puzzled the on­ school, social environment and intellectual ambition, looker at British politics. he packed up his bags and "emigrated" to America, "Any leader could have been excused," he re­ and to the Wild West. There he lived the tough marks, "for confusion and puzzlement concerning life of a cowboy, teamster, mail-carrier, rancher, the economic situation in 1929-31. But MacDonald prospector, "assisting" at some incidents that was more oracular, more eloquent, more uplifting would make good scenario copy for a Western, and in his confusion than any man in his generation." at least once escaping death at the hands of the As for his own role in that situation, Norman villain by the breadth of a hair. Angell looks back on it with no pride whatever. "It seems to me now," he says, "to have been vacillat­ I find the picture of this delicate-minded idealist ing, even pusillanimous." Although MacDonald and -a featherweight physically, and mentally over­ others pressed him to do so, and although the step weighted, as his brow so plainly shows-sticking a comported with his own special understanding of six-shooter in his belt and setting off to Mexico to the situation, he refused to join the national Coali­ round up· a herd of cattle and drive them up over tion. For once, it seems, he was swayed politically the border into California, a ravishing one. 1 think by those irrational emotions against which his life it is important, too. Had there been a few more had been a crusade, and he avows that it was no like it, the "life of ideas" might, I suspect, have credit to him. been a little more fruitful. The "treason of the in­ The motives of refusal were, I am afraid, mainly tellectuals" might not have been a rule to be relied that I shrank from facing the censure of old friends on. The intelligentsia might not present the picture in the Labour ranks-censure for "ratting," for "be­ of fibroid degeneration and general collapse in a trayal of the cause," for failing to stand by old com­ world crisis that it does today. At least we of the rades. This ought not to have weighed with me at literary brotherhood would be wiser if we had all. But it did. wrestled once in a lifetime with something a little That he committed this sin against rationality, more substantial than words. that his high and calm political intelligence did After seven years of it, however, Norman Angell break down once in a most human way, is rather realized that "the simple life of manual toil in the pleasing to the reader. It balances and rounds.out open spaces" has its own problems and anxieties: the picture. It seems almost as though an artist "drought, short crops, low prices, accidents, loss of had painted it in. For although Sir Norman is stock ... frustration, loneliness, fatigue, usually wholly unconscious of this, the picture is of a the deadening pall of debt." He decided that a taste rarely elevated and noble life. of turmoil and congestion and the "problems of so­ Besides the record of that life, this book is en­ ciety" in the Old World would be, on the whole, re­ riched by Sir Norman's reflections-veritable little freshing. So he packed up again, what little he had, essays in some cases-on a wide variety of topics: and by way of San Francisco, St. Louis and Chi- Victorian Repressions and the Subsequent Increase JULY 28, 1902 743

in Neuroses; The South if Lincoln Had Lived; The this excellent book of adventure, be filmed quickly. Career and Character of Lord Northcliffe; Wood­ In justice to author and publisher one should add row \Vilson's Fame and Aloofness; The Vitupera­ that apart from its high merit as entertainment, tions of Ezra Pound; Why the Big Difference Be­ the book has serious value as a contribution to his­ tween the United States and Mexico ; An Estimate tory and geography. It describes the discovery and of H. G. Wells; I-Iow Far the British Labor Party, conquest of the last great cattle frontier in North though Ostensibly Non-Marxian, took over the America, and does it admirably. Passions and Illusions of the Class Struggle Doc­ JAMES RORTY trine; The Incredible Gullibility of Believers in Freedom under Socialism; The Twin Dangers of Pessimism and Optimism; and many others, equally Carpers on Lawrence intriguing. Norman Angell still believes that the preserva­ D. H. Lawrence, Portrait of a Genius But ... , tion of our free civilization depends upon the by Richard Aldington. New York: Duell, Sloan growth of rational-understanding. He fears it may & Pearce. $3.75 not grow fast enough. We may find ourselves in the Journey With Genius, by Witter Bynner. New position of the man about to be hanged who "when York: John Day. $4.00 asked if he would like to make a last statement, said: 'I would like to say, sir, that this will be a Aldington's book, done with a carping heart, is en­ lesson to me.'" tertaining spite. It is not so much a portrait of "We may learn our lessQn too late," he concludes. Lawrence as a confession of Aldington's. Aldington "My own attempts to accelerate the learning may writes as though D. H. Lawrence had pilfered his not have had much effect. Others may be more destiny; the truth is that Aldington's own life is a successful." MAX EASTMAN study in contemporary compromise. It may be that no one really compromises, but that everybody just fathoms his nature. This, however, is a very risky doctrine to accept. One has moral obligations to The Last Frontier heaven, friends, nature, and to one's vestal fires, and a Ulan might bend fate a little if' he will only Grass Beyond the Mountains, by Richmond P. try. Hobson, Jr. Philadelphia: Lippincott. $3.75 I am almost totally at odds with Aldington's and Before their austere cinematographic ritual was Bynner's portraits of Lawrence. These two bicker­ corrupted by the recent spate of sexy supercolos­ ing, gadfly books were written out of envy. Few sals, Westerns were .Westerns, as dependable as can bear their own faults in others, and Aldington ham and eggs, and filmed in the great open spaces detests Lawrence's errors because his own have where men were men. The women, too; that is to never been the leaven for a Quixote trauma. Law­ say, the women were plain, worthy creatures who rence is almost everything that Aldington and were never permitted to steal the show from the Bynner say he was, but in their two books we have horses, which were always incredibly but authen­ the world talking about the spirit. Aldington de­ tically beautiful. tests Lawrence because he regarded himself as a Mr. Hobson's book obeys and adorns that nobler savior and a Messiah. Suppose Lawrence was tradition and appropriately, it is dedicated to his wrong? There are those who say Christ was wrong. horses. America's ten-year-olds were in luck the But who would relinquish the parables even if it day it was printed. That goes, too, for adults like could be proved that Jesus were an impostor? the present writer who once, back in the twenties, Lawrence had a broken pottery-jug face, rusty came within sight of the fabulous Itchas, saw the robin hair, and a wild potato nose. The wild desert mountain goats standing on the snowy crags, swore seer or Cenobite in him was what neither Alding­ that some day he would see the other side of them ton nor Bynner could bear. Aldington relates how thaI" hills and then basely foreswore his oath. the young provincial Lawrence, just out of a coal Mr. Hobson's yarn is all the better for the fact digger's house at Derbyshire, attended his first that it is mostly true. I say "mostly" without in­ party given by Ford Madox Ford and Violet Hunt. tending to impugn the veracity of the owner of the The youth had never had roast beef, brussels vast Renwick Ranch in northern British Columbia, sprouts, plum pudding with champagne, and he but rather by way of paying tribute to his literary thought that if such a repast were the guerdon of talent; he is much too good a writer to let a mere a few poems which Ford had accepted, imagine matter of truth stand between him and the proper what he would receive as a famous author-why, a denouement of a good yarn. For instance, what thousand pounds a year! Then the poet met Frieda, really happened when the three cowboys were wife of an unamorous professor and mother of chased by the three cow moose-or should one say three children, and withfive pounds they left Eng­ "meese"? ... Let it ride; the tale is wonderful as land for the continent. it stands. Let it, and the other stories that enrich Here Aldington pauses to disclose that Lawrence. 744 THE FREEMAN who had deprived a professor with an impecunious flay. Doubtless D. H. Lawrence had every fault psyche of a wife with Vesuvian blood, was always Aldington says he had, but who is Aldington to prating about wedlock as though he were virginal. cast a first stone? EDWARD DAHLBERG But Aldington should know that the greatest prudes were hotfleshed men, like Augustine, and Paul in the seventh chapter of Romans, or Tolstoi. When carnal men cease being prudes, civilization /Brief Mention will disappear. Aldington writes that almost all of Lawrence's Reprieve From War: A Manual for Realists, by friends went away from him, that he caricatured Lionel Gelber. New York: Macmillan. $3.00 them. His friends were his sitters in the various This is tough, realistic book geared for a tough, novels, and if they had not the wit and learnl'fig realistic age. Its author, a noted British political and character of Sir Thomas Browne or GiordaueP' analyst, offers no panaceas for world peace or for Bruno, was that Lawrence's fault? Witter Bynner slaying the Soviet dragon. All we can hope to have, tells us that in Mexico City Lawrence suddenly he says in effect, is a reprieve from war-and that turned upon Fred Leighton and told him to go only if the West maintains a continuous prepond­ away, because he was no good for him. Well, people erance of power against the Soviet Union. Not a sap us of our truths, and had we the prescience to relatively equal balance of power, Gelber emppa­ tell persons who break the fluid of our spirit and sizes, but "surplus power on the part of the more harm our best ends to leave us, we might spare solvent of the competitors." ourselves many disgraces. Still, Lawrence was a Such a preponderance of military, political and froward man; it is a terrible disease and is fast economic power,Gelber says, is being forged today. ruining the modern character. We have become a Even in the slow' and painful early stages of its nation of liars, not alone for profit but because it forging it has deterred the Soviet Union from is a kind of profligacy, like reading a newspaper, sweeping aggression. The Kremlin knows that it or being busy. But Richard Aldington is more fro­ rnay not overstep certain bounds without inviting ward than Lawrence because he tells the truth less armed resistance. It could not, for example, cap­ often. italize on the Berlin blockade to throw the Allies Aldington also declares that Lawrence had a fru­ out of that city. Mr. Gelber thinks the Soviets, gal, pocketbook heart, and that he lied about the fearing the use of a preponderance of power against money he really had to avoid giving it to the needy. them, may settle for a modus vivendi. According to Aldington, Messiah Lawrence was Spiced through as it is with aphorisms, Mr. really a moneychanger in the temple of literature. Gelber's charted solution isa dismal one. The It may be true that Lawrence did not tell every­ author -admits that "peace by power is, in an age body that he had, at times, a few hundred pounds of tension, no recipe for peace of mind." But aside in the bank. He was so vulnerable to the needs of from a vague faith in free man's will to live, this writip.g waifs that he had to conceal his means. book offers little more. M. E. Oddly enough, Aldington rails at the gullible Law­ rence for giving money to low, humble people. But a man who can not be duped is a rascal, and though Traveller's Samples, by Frank O'Connor. New Lawrence did not show Maurice Magnus his bank York: Knopf. $2.75 book, he did help him. Magnus was some sort of Frank O'Connor has an enviable reputation: his impresario of the ballet, a third-rate artist and a short stores have stirred so much enthusiastic in­ first-class sponger, but Lawrence did not know how terest that his readers aren't satisfied until they to tell him to go. Lawrence got Maurice Magnus's make their friends read him. Word-of-mouth adver­ book published, which Aldington rightly says is of tising has given him a unique place among those no worth, and wrote his famous hundred-page pre­ who practice the short story as an art. Mr. O'Con­ face to the volume. It is a remarkable piece of nor writes with directness, without dramatics and Italian landscape and it shows a conscience which with a lusty understanding of the joys and trials we have lost. of everyday life and its problems. He faithfully Lawrence was a literary scold; he used to write projects the essentials of character and background me bullying, didactic letters when I was living in with such a sure insight that they appeal im­ diggings in Chelsea, London. But when he sus­ mediately to heart and mind. The stories of pected that I was not eating very often, he sent me "Traveller's Samples" sustain a high level of pene­ a five-pound note. tration, whether in the youthful "First Confession" Most men hate what is not average, and there is or in the more ironic "This Mortal Coil" with its a great deal of the ordinary in Richard Aldington's worldly reversal of situation. Formerly Mr. O'Con­ gifts. Richard Aldington has written a bitter book nor's tales were of Irish life; however, his present in which he blames D. H. Lawrence for being collection has several stories of Anglo-Irish in­ testy! It is a Judas book, for there is hardly a volvement. With rare humor, O'Connor depicts the human trait in Lawrence that Aldington does not Irish and English blindly in conflict. E.C. From one point of view.. <,

or another...

only one viewpoint IS RIGHT!

Every question has two sides, hut only ONE can be RIGHT! It is the tragedy of our age that moral principle is almost universally sacrificed to the promptings of expediency: "BE OBJECTIVE!" "F'O'RGET THE LAW!" "DISCARD M,ORALITY AND LE'GALITYI" The FREEMAN evaluates current issues on the basis of the principles fundamental to our tradi­ tional American way of life. Here is one of many testimonials to the effectiveness of its work, from a subscriber who is fighting leftism in our schools: "'The enclosed newspaper clipping shows how I dissenlinate all factual lnaterial we can find, especially those extra copies of the FREEMAN." ... BE INFORMED ... {(NOW THE TRUTH ... read the FREEMAN regularly :and be sure your comulunity leaders, clergymen, teachers and libraries are FREEMAN subscribers. Subscribe now for yourself. Subscribe now for your friends and associates.

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THE Name .

Address . reeman City, State . 06 Issues $1.00 o 1 Year $5.00 o 2 Years $9.00 THE FR'EIEMAN. 240 Madison Avenue. New York 16.N. Y. 746 THE FREEMAN socialism, New Dealism and other as­ A Report from Britain pects of the Communist conspiracy in Letters America. One of its editors, in a burst It is good to see the Freeman so hand­ of honesty, wrote me: "If you wrote somely got up nowadays, and to hear Mr. Budenz and the Politburo 'War and Peace' tomorrow, you'd get of your steadily increasing circulation. Following George Sokolsky's edited no credit for it. Please don't ask me ...I am doing my small bit, with supplement of the McCarran Subcom­ why." But I know. And, of course, a some success, to induce my friends to mittee Hearings which you published, certain very sophisticated New York subscribe. The newsstand circulation in Professor James Burnham's "How the weekly, and another notable for its university towns should do much good. IPR Helped Stalin Seize China" [June radical slant, ignored the book en­ I am just back from Scarborough, 30] was a "clincher." I was puzzled, tirely.... However, the people are where I lectured to the clergy of the however, by Professor Burnham's reading it, and that is what counts. diocese of York on the mind of. Burke. statement that Louis Budenz "has God save the Republic in 1952! Burke himself remarks that, at the commencement of the French Revolu­ never quite understood what was hap­ Eggertsville, N. Y. TAYLOR CALDWELL pening at Politburo meetings." Does he tion, nearly two-thirds of the clergy sympathized with the leveling move­ . mean Politburo meetings in Moscow or The Rewards of Internationalism the American Politburo? I·am certain ment. (But Burke swept radical par­ that the American Politburo doesn't at Whence arises the opprobrium attached sons and radical bishops before him, all times understand what's happening to the term "isolationist"? A review of after 1790.) I suspect that two-thirds in Moscow and equally certain that our incursions into international af­ of the English parochial clergy were Budenz knew what was happening­ fairs, by any standard of common Socialists two or three years ago; but and is happening-on the domestic sense, makes it not one of reproach but they are changing now. The younger side. His "worried" look is simply the rather of commendation. parsons were interested in my conser­ expression of a man who knows how The Spanish-American War, although vative opinions; only some older men much there is to be done and how lit­ a comparatively minor affair, never­ were resentful. "Prevailing opinions tle time there remains to do it. theless was waged at a substantial cost generally are the opinions of the gen­ in men and money. And for the first eration that is passing," said Disraeli. FORREST E. CORSON time in the world's history the victor Port Washington, N. Y. St. Andrews, Scotland RUSSELL KIRK rewarded the vanquished. We paid Spain $20,000,000 for our "brutal as­ But the People Read It sault" and to the Vatican $7,000,000 I can not be too grateful for Mr. John for agricultural lands held by the Chamberlain's wonderful review of my Catholic Church in the Philippine book, "The Devil's Advocate," in your Islands, these to be redistributed to issue of June 16. Filipino farmers. His prophecy that we women may In 1917, primarily to assist Great eventually have to save this Republic Britain and France, we again entered from communism (euphemistically into war. And what did we obtain from An Appreciation called the Welfare State and the vari­ our war efforts? Why, the privilege of ous Deals) is likely to come true. I am picking up the check for our allies, I want to compliment you and the staff a, member of the Minute Women of France and England, to the tune of and contributors of the Freeman on America, and weare out to repeal the billions. When we expressed some your excellent publication. Your collec­ Sixteenth Amendment and so get rid slight interest in the matter of repay­ tive efforts and objective analyses have of all the monstrous bureaucracy and ment, we were characterized as "Uncle been an inspiration to many of us who confiscation of the American people's Shylock." have been somewhat disheartened by hard-earned money. Many of us, like Again in 1941 and again primarily the growing trend to "creeping social­ Miss Vivien Kellems and myself, are to serve European interest we joined ism." It is really gratifying to know ignoring the covert or open threats in a European war at untold cost in that there is a substantial group of from Washington during this effort. I American lives and American funds people in this country that can no could tell you a very pretty story about when neither American territory was longer stomach "me-tooism" and have this! It is so awful and horrifying a threatened nor 'American lives in jeop­ the fortitude to present their views. story that my own lawyers had to be ardy. What did we gain? Nothing. No Ann Arbor, Mich. ROBERT D. LONGWISH shown proof of it before they could be­ reparations - no acknowledgment of lieve it.... aid extravagantly given. "Intellectual Minute Man" Mr. Chamberlain ... mentioned that The Korean war suggests that we "The Devil's Advocate" has just been never learn by experience. Venturing in As a constant and satisfied reader, I published "amid the almost total si­ on a partnership agreement, we find wish to commend your magazine for lence of those who know how to kill by most of our partners busy attending the forthright stand it take:b on mat­ indirection." I am proud to say that to home affairs, a few others making ters of national importance and par­ the New York Herald Tribune and the token participations, and for the most ticularly on your exposition of the Saturday Review of Literature gave part the American government left danger of communism and the manner my book wonderful reviews, as did sev­ "holding the bag." in which its malevolent forces operate eral of the Boston newspapers, notably In face of such a record of interna­ in our Republic. I consider your pub­ the Boston Post, not to mention a num­ tional blundering, why should anyone lication in the light of an intellectual ber of other prominent papers.... object to being called an "isolation­ Minute Man on guard at all times ~o However, a certain newspaper, self­ ist"? It is high time that America stop give warning when subversive ideolo­ allegedly the greatest in the nation, playing Big Brother to all the other gies are presented with their sugar­ has consistently given me ridiculing nations on the globe; and if this be coated appeal of "security from the and contemptuous reviews since 1946, isolation, we had better embrace it. cradle to the grave." when I began to attack communism, San Francisco, Cal. RICHARD H. CREEL N ew York City TERENCE MULLEN f'hotof/roph /'1/ Horton Mun'(J_ll

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